COLUMBIA, S.C. — Sen. Darline Graham’s nascent political career is on the line Tuesday. So is President Donald Trump’s political clout.
After a six-week sprint, South Carolina Republicans will head to the polls — again — to pick their nominee for November’s Senate election, choosing between Graham, the political novice and sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Rep. Ralph Norman, a nine-year veteran of the House.
The race has become a test of Trump’s grip on the GOP, of whether policy still matters to voters and of whether a political neophyte with a famous last name can convert a short-term Senate appointment into a full six-year term.
By all indications, it will be a photo finish.
“It’s gonna be close,” Graham said Monday during a press conference in Columbia, standing alongside South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster. “But we feel good. We’ve had a lot of momentum.”
That projection of confidence comes despite a rocky stretch on the campaign trail for Graham, who drew criticism from Columbia to Washington after failing to answer a question about Taiwan during last week’s debate. “I’m not that informed on national security,” she said.
The stumble hasn’t deterred Trump. If anything, it has led him to dig in — and to raise the political capital he has riding on the outcome.
In the lead-up to the runoff, MAGA Inc., a Trump-aligned super PAC, spent more than $827,000 on Graham’s behalf. And Monday night — hours before polls opened in the Palmetto State — Trump held his second tele-rally for her.
“She’s tough, she’s strong and she’s the perfect person to carry on the legacy of her brother,” Trump said. “Very different people. She’s very much about that affordability. He was very much about foreign affairs, but he was good at everything, and she’s good at everything. And she will be — with time — she’ll be one of our greats.”
The eleventh-hour push — both financial and political — comes after Trump publicly encouraged Graham to run, endorsed her candidacy once she did and traveled to Myrtle Beach to rally for her just four days before runoff.
The full-court press has raised eyebrows in Washington, where insiders question why the president is spending his time, political heft and money in reliably red South Carolina rather than in the purple states whose Senate races will determine whether Republicans keep their majority.
The leading theory: Trump knows his own credibility is on the line. That was clear at Friday’s rally, when he acknowledged that turnout drops when he isn’t on the ballot and urged South Carolina Republicans to vote as if he were.
In a sense, he is — or at least his reputation is, particularly after a handful of his endorsed candidates lost their primaries.
“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” Trump pleaded. “Just come and vote. It’s so important.”
If Republicans stay home, he warned, they will “lose everything that we’ve done” — the border, tax cuts, soaring businesses.
Then he pivoted to what a loss would mean for him.
“I’m going to be impeached,” Trump said. “They’re gonna impeach me. They have no idea why.”
Trump’s offensive has also included defending Graham after her debate gaffe. On the tarmac en-route to Friday’s rally, Trump told reporters that Graham is “very smart, and she was being honest. She’s into the price of groceries.”
“She is going to do what the military wants, and really what the president wants,” he added. “She understands that national security is my thing.”
Graham’s own cleanup has followed similar lines: She is not, she reminds voters, a career politician.
For some, that isn’t enough.
Roger Bothers, a 67-year-old grocery clerk from Chapin, told MS NOW on Monday that he had initially supported Graham but is now undecided. She “blew that answer,” he said.
“Her answer that she gave on the Taiwanese — it was the worst answer I’ve ever heard in my life,” Bothers said. “So I’m still sitting on the fence on it. I am voting for sure, but I — that answer was terrible.”
Was it disqualifying? “It could be, yes,” he said.
Others are looking past it, casting her inexperience as an asset — an outsider attuned to South Carolina’s needs who could shake up Washington.
“I think I’m voting for Darline Graham,” said Rebecca Appling, a 71-year-old speech pathologist from Columbia. “I recognize she’s not someone who’s been there forever, and that actually is kind of appealing because the current people don’t seem to be getting anything done, so maybe a new breath of fresh air could be a positive thing.”
As voters debate her qualifications, Graham has offered a murky-at-best picture of her own political beliefs. At her rally with Trump on Friday and at campaign stops across South Carolina, Graham has offered Republicans a platter of red meat, voting to fight Democratic socialists, while saying little about what she would actually do in the Senate.
She has drawn some distance from her brother, saying repeatedly that she would go further than he did on immigration. “I love him to death, I miss him dearly, but my stand is a little bit stronger. I think it’s real simple: If you’re here illegally, you need to go back immediately,” she said.
She has also said she favors scrapping the 60-vote filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act — a break from Lindsey Graham, who defended the Senate tradition. And on Monday, asked by MS NOW whether Joe Biden lawfully won the 2020 election and whether she would have voted to certify the results, as her brother did, she deflected.
“I think our election system is broken,” Graham said. “That’s why I think it’s so important that we get the SAVE America Act passed. That’s why I wanted to stay through recess to get that done.”
Pressed on the matter, she moved to the next question.
She has been similarly thin on the policy she says she cares most about. Despite emphasizing affordability over foreign policy, Graham demurred Monday when asked what, specifically, she would do about rising costs.
“We’ll see when I get there,” Graham said.
Tuesday’s runoff falls exactly 45 days after Lindsey Graham’s sudden death, a shock that thrust his sister into the spotlight and launched a political career few saw coming.
She has been a sitting senator for 42 of those days — a fact she returns to on the trail.
“I buried my brother. I started a new role as a United States senator, and I have been on this brutal campaign schedule, and I’m still standing,” she said Monday. “So if that doesn’t tell you I’m strong, I don’t know what will.”
Graham also spoke to — and leaned in on — her biggest vulnerability in the race: Her lack of political experience. And in the same breath, she likened herself to the most well-known man in American politics — the one who will either be responsible for making her a full-term senator or add her to the list of endorsees who came up short.
“I know some people have said I’m not a politician. Guilty as charged,” Graham said. “But you know who else wasn’t a politician? President Trump was not a politician, and he’s done a doggone good job.”
Alex Trowbridge contributed.
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