South Carolina Republicans have had a Graham on their ballots for the last three decades. And after the blitzkrieg GOP primary race to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, it looks like they will have one for at least one more election. Darline Graham, the late senator’s younger sister, advanced to the runoff stage of the special election Tuesday night with 33.8% of the vote alongside Rep. Ralph Norman, who took 24.2% of the vote.
There’s still much we don’t know about where Graham sits on the ideological spectrum, as she’s never held elected office before Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to finish out her brother’s term just two days after he died in July. Although she has said in interviews that she has different priorities than her brother held, she has made clear that her brother’s devotion and capitulation toward President Donald Trump will be at the core of her burgeoning political identity.
She has made clear that her brother’s devotion and capitulation toward President Donald Trump will be at the core of her burgeoning political identity
At the lone debate between the GOP Senate candidates, Graham was far and away the person on stage who clung closest to Trump’s coattails. Graham “had several opportunities during the debate to at least shade her support of his policies,” The New York Times wrote in its coverage of the debate. “Unlike some of her opponents, she took none of them, casting herself as a solid Trump vote in the Senate.”
While there’s never been a sibling to enter the Senate this way, there’s a long history of spouses taking up the “widow’s succession” after their partners’ deaths. The usual expectation is that they either be a caretaker for the office, or else faithfully carry out the same policies as their deceased partner. Graham was likely appointed with that expectation in mind — and like others before her, she has chosen to run for the seat in her own right.
As Lindsey Cormack, an associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology, and her student Kacey DiPasquale wrote in The Washington Post, Graham joins a long and storied tradition — with a twist. At least six women have joined the Senate’s ranks after their husbands’ passings over the last century.
Appointing a spouse to the temporary role manages to show a respect for the legacy of the departed, while still leaving the door open for more experienced politicians to throw their hats into the ring for a full term. Beyond that, as Cormack and DiPasquale noted, “before women could vote, run for office or hold formal positions of power, many were deeply involved in governing alongside their office-holding husbands,” offering a sense of continuity.
But as the first woman to take up her husband’s Senate seat, Hattie Caraway of Arkansas showed early on that many of the women named to those positions were not content to remain in the background. After joining the Senate in 1931, Caraway became the first woman elected to the Senate when she, like Graham, chose to run in the special election to fill the seat her husband left behind.
Graham, by all accounts, kept her distance from her brother’s political operation aside from the occasional appearance in an ad or at a campaign event. She spent years advocating for disabled South Carolinians and helping them find employment. While her brother keyed in on foreign policy, Graham recently told MS NOW she will have a different set of priorities:
“I want to focus on healthcare affordability, the things that really matter to people in South Carolina. Again, not that national security is not important, but again, you got to go to the food line behind you and buy groceries every day to support your family, right?”
But it makes sense as a neophyte for Graham to latch onto the president, whose endorsement she’s using as a makeshift seal of admission to the world of politics. Graham’s brother at least made his way through the ranks of GOP politics before Trump’s rise. Before reaching the Senate, the late senator had made his name in the House as a stalwart member of the Republican Revolution in the 1990s, even serving as one of the prosecutors during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
In the years since Trump first announced his presidential bid in 2015, the late Republican South Carolinian alternated between opposing the billionaire and embracing him. His short-lived declaration in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack — “count me out, enough is enough” — and subsequent subservience to Trump should serve as a shorthand for political cowardice. By the end of his life, he had become a frequent golfing partner and adviser to the president, having successfully pressed for the war against Iran that he had sought for years.
It makes sense as a neophyte for Graham to latch onto the president, whose endorsement she’s using as a makeshift seal of admission to the world of politics
It is understandable in the MAGA age, and amid a GOP primary, why Graham has opted to take this path as she seeks to become one of only 100 U.S. senators. If she makes it through the runoff to become the GOP nominee, the odds are historically in her favor in the reliably red state. Dr. Annie Andrews, her Democratic opponent, is the latest to try and flip a seat where record breaking donations previously failed to dislodge the late senator.
Andrews’ own lack of previous time in elected office complicates any attempt to home in on Graham’s morbid ascension and inexperience. Placing Graham’s newcomer status in the spotlight could still be enough to peel off some skeptical Republicans and independents in a year in which Trump’s popularity is reaching new lows. It may behoove Andrews and others more, though, to instead simply ask voters who of them would best be able to serve the people of South Carolina’s interests — and who would only serve the president’s.
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