South Carolina Senate race between Darline Graham and Ralph Norman heads to runoff today

South Carolina Republicans will decide Tuesday who will replace Sen. Lindsey Graham on the ballot in November’s midterm election, after a rushed campaign in the wake of his sudden death in July.

Graham’s sister, Sen. Darline Graham, faces Rep. Ralph Norman in Tuesday’s runoff vote. The two candidates were the top two vote-getters in the special primary election on Aug. 11, with Darline Graham getting nearly 33% of the vote to Norman’s almost 25%, after neither won 50% of the vote.

The runoff contest comes after Darline Graham was appointed to serve out the remainder of her late brother’s term, which ends early next year. The four-term senator had been seeking reelection, and had already won the Republican primary in June. 

The winner of Tuesday’s runoff will take on Dr. Annie Andrews, who won the Democratic primary in June. Although the South Carolina Senate race is usually a fundraising boon to Democrats, the state remains solidly Republican and has just one Democratic representative in Congress. 

President Trump, who had been close with Lindsey Graham, has thrown his support behind Darline Graham. He campaigned for her in South Carolina last week and held a tele-rally for her on Monday. 

Darline Graham, who has no prior experience in elected office, has also garnered the support of South Carolina’s other senator, GOP Sen. Tim Scott, who said after her first few weeks in the Senate and her first-place finish in the primary that he’s “confident she’s the real deal.”

The newly minted senator has billed herself as “a problem solver, a critical thinker, and a leader,” with decades of experience working for South Carolina. Darline Graham, 62, most recently served as commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind. She has focused on domestic issues during the brief campaign, and her lack of a foreign policy background has raised some questions about her preparedness.

In a debate last week, Graham conceded that she’s inexperienced in some regards, most notably when she stumbled on a question about Taiwan and the South China Sea. She said she’s “not that informed on national security,” in a stark contrast to her brother, an outspoken foreign policy hawk.

“I’m not a polished politician,” Graham said. “National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”

Graham had a close relationship with her brother, who never married or had children. She’s cited their upbringing, where she and her brother observed their parents working long hours at their bar and liquor store in central South Carolina, for their shared work ethic. And as she’s pledged to carry out her brother’s legacy, she’s also emphasized that she would chart her own path in the Senate, which could be more conservative than her brother’s. During last week’s debate, she quickly made her views on transgender athletes in sports, abortion and gun rights known.

Meanwhile, Norman, who has represented South Carolina in the House since 2017, has presented himself as an experienced legislator with a track record as a conservative fighter, while calling Graham an “unknown candidate.” 

The real estate developer and longtime member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus was one of a handful of Republicans to jump into the special primary race despite the president’s endorsement of Darline Graham. And for Norman, who was one of only two House Republicans to back former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in her bid to challenge Mr. Trump for the GOP nomination in 2024, it wasn’t the first time he’s been willing to break with the president. 

Norman, 73, has the backing of Haley, who also served as ambblockador to the U.N. during the first Trump administration, and called out Darline Graham’s lack of experience after her debate performance.

“Lindsey Graham was well informed on the United States’ national security. Darline Graham admits she’s not,” Haley said on X. “This is not something you inherit. And it’s critical in the U.S. Senate.”