Sen. Darline Graham’s (R-SC) bid to hold onto the Senate seat that her brother held until his death got a thumbs down from Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist Kathleen Parker.
Parker, it should be noted, is a longtime resident of Camden, South Carolina.
In her column for the Washington Post, Parker accused Darline Graham of being heavily “stage-managed” by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s aides and lacking the charm and humor that made her brother popular with his Senate colleagues — another reason why her campaign is struggling.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) appointed Darline Graham to fill out her brother’s term, which ends in January, after his death in July. The appointment “was widely understood to be temporary,” Parker wrote, until President Donald Trump “had other plans” for “our wonderful Darline,” as he recently called her.
“Darline Graham is a Trump pick for reasons that did not include her political agility or her mastery of the country’s top issues,” Parker wrote, adding that Graham “pleaded ignorance” on national security in a primary debate.
“These aren’t character flaws, but they represent a serious deficit for a senator whose only apparent qualification for the job is that her brother once held it,” the columnist asserted.
Parker singled out Graham’s questioning of former special counsel Jack Smith at a Senate Judiciary hearing. Graham accused Smith of bullying her brother. Smith replied that Lindsey Graham, “a patriotic public servant,” was not a target of the investigation but likely would have been a witness. Graham kept pressing. “You caused my brother and a lot of other senators a lot of stress,” she said, “and that makes me sick. You should be ashamed.”
“Staff coaching can only go so far,” Parker wrote of Graham’s inability to recover when Smith praised her brother. “The senator’s adherence to an obvious script suggests that thinking on her feet isn’t a strong suit. She came across as testy and mean.”
Pointing to an InsiderAdvantage poll that has Graham up one point over Democrat Annie Andrews, as well as news that the Cook Political Report recently moved the race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” Parker noted, “but data tells only part of the story.”
“If Graham fails in her bid, she can be forgiven for acting out of loyalty and love for her brother,” Parker concluded. “If she prevails, South Carolina will get what it deserves — a scripted marionette for an unpopular, lame-duck president who, unlike Graham, will be gone in two years.”
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