Darlene Graham recently won the Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina. She is the younger sister of former Senator Lindsey Graham, who died last month. President Donald Trump's ability to transform her overnight into a federal Senate candidate deserves to become political legend. Trump not only backed Governor Henry McMaster's decision to appoint Graham as an interim senator to serve out her brother's remaining term, but also personally persuaded her to run for a full six-year Senate term. Graham accepted Trump's offer and was ready to step before the public almost instantly. Her emergence recalled Sarah Palin, the Republican former governor of Alaska who joined Senator John McCain's presidential campaign as his running mate in a dramatic turn in 2008. Like Palin, Graham connects with the public through an unvarnished, down-to-earth appeal, but she was not prepared for the national stage. At a debate held before the primary, she stirred controversy by answering "I don't really know" when asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea matter to national security. Political commentators at the time probably thought Graham would struggle to win the primary. The result proved otherwise.
Trump is claiming credit for Graham's primary victory. A super PAC supporting the president poured $800,000 into her campaign. Trump also appeared at a Graham rally in South Carolina, urging the crowd to "vote as if my name is on the ballot." Even so, the entire credit for Graham's primary win should not go to Trump. Representative Ralph Norman, who lost the primary, had already been passed over once by voters in a recent Republican primary for governor of South Carolina. And Graham won the primary runoff narrowly, with 52.5% of the vote. The largest share of the credit belongs to the candidate herself. The smartest thing Graham did was give that candid, self-assured answer to the foreign policy question. Her plain, direct response struck voters as sincere and moved them.
When Graham said, "To be honest with you, national security is not my field," was that not, in fact, only natural at this point? She had just buried the brother who raised her, and had to take the oath of office as a senator without time to gather herself from her grief. Many people saw themselves in her answer to the question about Taiwan and the South China Sea. Sometimes a candidate admitting she does not know the answer to a question can earn as many points as a flawless response. For ordinary people getting by day to day, character and honesty matter more than knowledge.
Lindsey Graham, to be sure, could have explained Taiwan and the South China Sea at the length of a research paper and still made us laugh. His death was a heavy blow to the MAGA — Make America Great Again — camp and to Trump. The president could count on Lindsey Graham, his golfing partner, to take the lead in resolving a range of problems. Friends of the late senator have testified that there were indeed times when he tried to restrain Trump's dangerous impulses. The newly appointed Graham will be of little help on that front.
In South Carolina, two women will now compete for the Senate seat. By November, Graham may be more conversant with the issues and ready to take on Democrat Annie Andrews. Andrews, a former pediatrician, also has no experience in elected office. Graham has already entered the fight, attacking Andrews as "the most radical liberal among the Democratic candidates for public office in South Carolina."
Democrats are welcoming Graham's primary win, confident that Andrews will dominate her in debates. According to internal polling by the Andrews campaign conducted before Lindsey Graham's death, she trailed the senator by just 3 percentage points. In this election, South Carolina voters will elect a woman to the Senate for the first time in the state's history. It is a belated but meaningful change, and one that Lindsey Graham himself would surely have applauded had he lived.
