The Wall Street Journal says Graham’s political fate in South Carolina is tied to Trump
Democratic candidate Annie Andrews raised $4.5 million in the first two weeks of October, while Republican Sen. Darline Graham raised less than $600,000, The Wall Street Journal reported. Privately, some Senate Republican campaign strategists and Trump advisers have grown alarmed about Graham’s race. Several said they believed they could have found a better candidate, but President Trump wanted Graham.
Public and internal polls show Graham tied with, or trailing, Democratic rival Dr. Annie Andrews, making the Palmetto State competitive in a way it has not been for decades. Trump won South Carolina by double digits in 2024, and the reliably red state has not voted for a Democrat statewide in two decades. Even as Trump’s approval has dropped amid growing frustration over gas prices and the Iran war, some consultants say Graham is still likely to eke out a tight victory buoyed by straight-ticket voters.
On Thursday, Trump traveled to Rock Hill, S.C., about 30 miles south of Charlotte, N.C., to rally support for Graham. Several thousand people attended, but part of the large arena was blocked off, leaving much of it empty. The idea for the rally came from Trump, a person close to the president said.
Andrews, a pediatrician and gun safety advocate, has used her funding advantage to blanket the airwaves with ads depicting Graham as a corrupt Washington insider and as “Data Center Darline.” She has also won endorsements from some of South Carolina’s prominent Republicans, including former Gov. David Beasley. Graham has struggled to raise money, a problem donors attributed in part to her inexperience and in part to contributors being tapped out from so many consecutive races. “Even though we’re a solid red state, it’s almost like she had an advantage,” Graham said.
Graham’s candidacy traces to an Oval Office conversation this summer, shortly after she was sworn in to finish her late brother Lindsey Graham’s Senate term. She was pressing Trump to support Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions bill, which her brother had been obsessed with, Graham said. She told Trump he could blame a grieving sister for any fallout. Trump was reluctant, she recounted, but chuckled and told her, “You’re tough.” It was then, she said, that he asked her to run for the full six-year term, something she had not previously considered. Trump later halted most of the sanctions, leaving Graham privately disappointed. The Wall Street Journal reported that Graham’s political fate in South Carolina had become tied to Trump’s.
“It’s just been absolutely brutal,” Graham said in an interview, describing a stretch in which she lost her brother and has competed in three elections in a span of months — a primary, a runoff and now the general election. “Campaigns are bad enough as they stand, but with all of that, it’s just been bad, times 10,” she said.
People who know Graham said she never wanted to be a public figure. She sometimes attended her brother’s events but usually did not speak publicly, South Carolina politicos said. The two were close, they said, but she preferred to stay behind the scenes. On the campaign trail, Graham has skipped events her brother attended, and state political veterans said they barely know her and that voters do not either. Graham said that after taking office, much of her time in Washington was spent being a senator, leaving her little time to introduce herself.
Allies said Graham, who led a state agency, has been jolted by her short time as a neophyte candidate and is not always enjoying the race, but is determined to see it through for her brother. The campaign stumbled early after Graham answered a debate question about Taiwan by saying that “national security is not my thing,” leaving her dejected for days, people who spoke to her said. She tried to recover, saying: “I do support the military.”
After winning the primary, Graham took campaign advice from other senators, including South Carolina’s Tim Scott, and from Republican gubernatorial nominee Alan Wilson, advisers said. She took part in more debate preparation, began talking with more voters and set out to prove her critics wrong. In recent weeks, she has often crossed the state for many events a day, studying materials about South Carolina issues and Andrews in the car in a go-negative strategy that has defined the race’s recent weeks.
Many speakers at Thursday’s rally barely mentioned Graham, instead attacking Andrews and national Democrats. They attacked Andrews for working for gun-control groups in recent years, referenced a comment she once made that she will “always support trans youth,” and described what they said was the possibility of the country descending into a socialist land with Shariah law. Trump himself repeatedly referred to Andrews as “Trannie Annie.” Rep. Russell Fry, who represents coastal South Carolina, said: “I think highlighting her past associations has been eye-opening to voters.” At the rally, Graham uttered a calculated but rare profanity in a bid to convince people to see Andrews her way, The Wall Street Journal reported. “She’s just plain old batshit crazy,” Graham said.
South Carolina’s Republican political apparatus has mobilized behind Graham with bus tours, out-of-state visitors, endorsement events and a last-minute flood of advertising. Gov. Henry McMaster, who appointed Graham to fill the seat, said he had no idea she would seek six years but was now determined to help her win. “I didn’t expect her to, but then she did,” McMaster said in an interview. Whether the effort will be enough remains an open question. Rep. Ralph Norman, who lost to Graham in the primary after a Trump appearance in Myrtle Beach pushed Graham over the finish line, said: “The reason he’s here is she’s lagging in the polls. He’s doing it because she is in trouble.” Norman said his entire family refused to vote for Graham and that a lot of conservatives were not interested, but he declined to say whether he would vote for her. “You have to earn the vote. She hasn’t done that,” Norman said. “The campaign has been about trying to prop up a candidate.”
Across town, on a blue-sky evening the night before Trump’s rally, around 400 people came out to support Andrews. Paul Vining, a retired veteran who opened the rally, said he had voted for Trump three times but had grown disillusioned with the second Trump term and with Graham, whom he said looked like a “hostage” on the campaign trail. On stage, Andrews avoided Trump’s name even as she denounced his policies on tariffs, the Iran war and corruption. “We don’t talk about him really,” Andrews said in an interview after speaking obliquely about Trump on stage for minutes.
On the campaign trail, Andrews, who lost a bid for Congress in 2022, has attacked her own party on border security and avoided talking about national Democratic debates. She has largely steered clear of the social and cultural issues Graham has emphasized. “That’s what you talk about when you don’t want to talk about the record-high gas and diesel prices and high grocery prices and closing rural hospitals, and the fact that so many South Carolinians will lose their health insurance if the Medicaid budget cuts go through,” she said in an interview. Andrews called her best argument against Graham that Graham is “unfit and unqualified” for the job. She has appeared on Fox News to make the case and has circulated lists of more than 100 South Carolina Republicans backing her, though many of the state’s top Republicans are not on them.
Democrats in the state said persuading Republicans to back Andrews had not been easy, even when Republicans were skeptical of Graham. “A lot of Democrats haven’t done themselves any favors,” Vining said. Jenny Desch, a prosecutor running for a state office seat, said she had some luck making the case for Andrews during door knocks, but some listeners were opposed no matter the argument, she said.
After the Andrews rally, supporters Lina Hovey and Jennifer Lyons gathered for dinner and margaritas at a Mexican restaurant nearby, enthused by Andrews’s performance. Lyons said she repeatedly called Lindsey Graham’s Senate office in the past to complain about Trump and was ignored. The two said they finally felt hope of flipping South Carolina blue, a hope they had not felt in decades, but said there were limits to their support. They declined Andrews bumper stickers for fear of being heckled or vandalized. Hovey said her husband did not talk politics outside the home, and the two largely avoided telling their neighbors they were Democrats; Hovey planned to put up an Andrews sign only in the race’s final days. “We’ll probably have our hearts broken,” Hovey said. “If this doesn’t happen now, it won’t be in our lifetimes.”