North Charleston, S.C. -- After the death of Lindsey Graham on July 11, Gov. Henry McMaster chose the late senator's sister, Darline, to serve out the remainder of her brother's term. A few days later, with Ms. Graham sworn in, President Trump endorsed her in a race in which she hadn't intended to compete. Ms. Graham agreed to run.
On July 30 this column stressed that endorsement's riskiness and noted several unanswered questions, among them: "Might she" -- meaning Ms. Graham -- "get in front of a news camera, or on a debate stage, and bungle so badly that an adversary features her in an ad?" So it came to pass. In a debate with a primary opponent, Ms. Graham couldn't so much as fudge an answer to a question on Taiwan. "National security is not my thing," she said in a devastating instance of candor. "I'm not that informed on national security." Ads featuring the line, paid for by allies of the Democratic nominee, Annie Andrews, currently flood South Carolina's media markets.
Ms. Graham will probably win. As former state GOP chairman Katon Dawson points out, "you can count on 14% to 17% of South Carolina voters to pull the lever straight Republican in every election. It's very hard for a Democrat to overcome that in a statewide election." Even so, Mr. Dawson says, "Darline could be in trouble."
Polling, limited as it is, has Ms. Graham, 62, and Ms. Andrews, 45, well within the margin of error. Maybe that's all guff. In 2020, former state Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison ran against Lindsey Graham. Polls had the race within a point or two and the progressive donor class in a state of ecstasy. Graham won by 10 points.
But that was Lindsey Graham, not his sister. She projects a likeable persona, but her candidacy inspires no one. The circumstances of her nomination -- chosen to finish her brother's term, elevated by the president for no obvious reason -- don't motivate young campaign grunts to knock on doors.
Also, she's absent. Ms. Graham appeared with Mr. Trump at an Aug. 21 rally in Myrtle Beach, but if she has held other public events, I haven't discovered their whereabouts. Her campaign emails consist almost entirely of fundraising messages, one of which sought to instill a sense of urgency by noting a poll -- by a firm not noted for penalizing Republicans -- that had Ms. Graham a single point ahead of her Democratic opponent. My requests for comment to the Graham campaign, if that's the right word for it, have gone unanswered.
In an ordinary election, or one in which Lindsey Graham were alive, Ms. Andrews wouldn't get much attention. In 2022, in a race for the state's First Congressional District, Rep. Nancy Mace got the better of Ms. Andrews, formerly a pediatrician at the Medical University of South Carolina, by pointing out her equivocations on the subject of, as the euphemism has it, gender-affirming care for minors. Ms. Andrews lost by nearly 14 points.
But Ms. Andrews seems a savvier politician than the also-ran of four years ago. At a Tuesday campaign event in Columbia, at a community center in a low-income neighborhood and attended by about 100 people pretty obviously not from that neighborhood, the candidate made the case for a litany of redistributionist policies, mainly on the topic of healthcare: Medicaid expansion, a "public option" for health insurance and so on.
A well-delivered line about Ms. Graham's "not my thing" blunder drew loud laughter and applause. "If your surgeon said to you 'Appendectomies aren't really my thing,' how do you think that would turn out?"
Notable in Ms. Andrews's talk was the absence of the name Trump. Asked about the Iran war, she proclaimed her opposition to it but named only Jared Kushner in her answer. The Democrat can sound vaguely socialistic on her signature issue -- she frequently criticizes the American healthcare system as "profit-motivated rather than patient-centered." But otherwise Ms. Andrews, with long, wavy blond hair and always smartly dressed, doesn't project assertive left-wingery. She likes the word "bipartisan" and refers to the state's popular senior senator, Republican Tim Scott, in respectful terms.
If Ms. Andrews does win, and particularly if the Democrats gain a slim majority in the Senate, she will find herself in a position akin to Joe Manchin's and Kyrsten Sinema's a few years ago: badgered relentlessly to cast votes large majorities of her constituents would find abhorrent. Her trouble expressing clarity on gender-altering surgeries a few years ago makes me wonder if Ms. Andrews won't follow her party wherever it goes, but she may have learned from that mistake.
After an event in North Charleston on Wednesday, in which cancer survivors related their travails with insurance companies, I asked Ms. Andrews if she's prepared for the Manchin/Sinema experience. "I can go to Washington and stand up to my party," she said. "I can take those hard votes. . . . This isn't really about my personal political ideology." Maybe.
A Democrat hasn't won statewide in South Carolina since 2006 and, before that, 1998. Polling and vibes aside, I find it hard to imagine the state's electorate in 2026 plumping for a Democrat. But recall Woody Allen's remark that 80% of success is showing up. Annie Andrews has shown up. So far, Darline Graham hasn't.
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