Making sense of what happened in South Carolina
Matt Walsh put it bluntly the morning after the election:
The critique is hard to dismiss on the facts. Darline Graham was appointed to finish her brother’s term after Lindsey Graham’s death. She had almost no prior political experience, limited public profile outside the family name, and ran a campaign whose central credential was kinship plus Trump’s endorsement. Trump cleared the path for her in the special primary, backing her over Ralph Norman with a rally and outside spending, then endorsed her again for the general election. She lost.
That outcome was not inevitable. South Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Fritz Hollings in 1998. The state’s other major statewide races remained in Republican hands. Graham’s defeat was an outlier, not the product of a statewide realignment. When the nominee’s main argument is “I’m the sister of Lindsey Graham” and the party’s most powerful figure has to vouch for her repeatedly, the risk is obvious in advance. The strategy worked in the runoff and failed in November.
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