In the race to replace the late US senator Lindsey Graham, 10 candidates have been barnstorming South Carolina diners, church halls and recreation centers, compressing a normal year of campaigning into about a fortnight.
The Republican party is staging a special primary election in the state on Tuesday to choose Graham’s replacement. His sister, Darline, who has been serving as interim senator following his sudden death last month, is on the ballot.
If no candidate wins an overall majority of votes, the top two will advance to a runoff on 25 August. Polling suggests that this is the most likely outcome.
“You know, South Carolina politics is very local,” said Eaddy Roe Willard, a longtime Republican activist in South Carolina’s Richmond county. “Something one of our former chairmen used to say about presidential candidates: we don’t decide whether or not we’re gonna vote for you until we’ve had a chance to shake your hand at least three times.”
On Friday Russell Fry, a Republican representative, pressed the flesh at Savage Craft Ale Works in West Columbia. On Monday morning, Darline Graham shook hands at Lizard’s Thicket breakfast restaurant, 2 miles away. Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor, and US representative Ralph Norman were also just a few miles down the road in Aiken on Friday, Willard said.
After Lindsey Graham’s death on 11 July, Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, appointed Darline Graham to fill the vacancy in the US Senate.
Lindsey Graham had already won the Republican primary election for his seat, so the Republican party must hold a special election to replace him on the ballot in November’s general election. The timeline is brutal by American political standards, holding an election within a few weeks of the vacancy.
The winner will face Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee and a pediatrician, in November.
‘South Carolina politics is different’
Darline Graham had the recommendation of Donald Trump to serve as McMaster’s Senate appointee, and has the president’s endorsement as well. She has spent decades as a public administrator and disability advocate, serving as the commissioner of the South Carolina commission for the blind from 2019 to 2026. She also has her brother’s considerable state political apparatus behind her.
Trump’s endorsement is important, but it is not decisive, according to Frank Tiller, the chair of the Spartanburg county Republican party. “It’s very important, but a lot of people are saying Donald Trump does not know South Carolina politics,” Tiller said. “South Carolina politics is different from a lot of places. Everybody here is fiercely independent.”
The compressed election cycle complicates the retail politics South Carolina voters have grown accustomed to, Tiller said. “There are not enough people that know the candidates. Everybody’s calling around trying to find out who to vote for, because they don’t know the candidates.”
Aside from Graham, two of the most able Republican competitors for the seat boast substantial campaign infrastructure of their own. Norman has served in the US House of Representatives since 2017, in a district covering the southern suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a wealthy real estate developer and a prominent member of the House Freedom caucus. Norman ran unsuccessfully for South Carolina governor earlier this year, and while he did not advance to the runoff, the infrastructure of his campaign was still largely intact when Graham died.
Fry represents Myrtle Beach and South Carolina’s conservative eastern border. Fry, an attorney, rose from the ranks of South Carolina’s state legislature after successfully challenging the former US representative Tom Rice in the GOP primary in 2022. Rice was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 insurrection. Trump paid him back by endorsing Fry, and campaigning to replace Rice. Both Fry and Norman have campaigned as fiscal hawks, highlighting culture war issues.
Sanford is a household name in South Carolina politics as a former governor with two separate stints in the US House. Sanford briefly challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican presidential primaries, and made headlines as governor after disappearing from the state for a week, ostensibly on an Appalachian Trail hiking trip, when he was instead having an extramarital affair in Argentina.
Lindsey Graham had faced a handful of primary challengers on 9 June, the most successful of which – businessman Mark Lynch – is campaigning for a second time this year, as a conservative outsider with a populist platform.
