COLUMBIA, S.C. — Reading the Southern mind is a tricky business, especially in secessionist South Carolina. It is even more so now that a second Northern invasion has seized and occupied the state’s best places, diluting the culture and potentially altering the political landscape.
Even so, some classic traits remain amid the population boom. Chief among these is a stubborn, independent streak and an allergic reaction to outsiders telling the born-and-bred how to think and what to do. This tendency is nearly pathological when it comes to the media and the so-called elites.
Lately, I’ve begun wondering whether this reaction might also apply to a certain New York celebrity narcissist who happens to be president of the United States. Methinks Donald Trump’s lame-duck irrelevance is starting to show.
While a Trump political endorsement has long been tantamount to the pope’s blessing for Republican office seekers, its effectiveness seems to be waning. Already this primary season, Republican voters have snubbed 10 Trump-endorsed candidates for statewide office or Congress, including in South Carolina.
Early on, Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette for governor. She was also endorsed by Trump loyalist Gov. Henry McMaster. But Evette didn’t win the primary outright and had to face state Attorney General Alan Wilson in a runoff, which she lost.
Trump’s endorsement ultimately became a curse when he decided just days before the runoff to also endorse Wilson, saying on Truth Social that either candidate would make a good governor. He may as well have driven a stake through Evette’s heart. Trump not only looked two-faced, he devalued his own currency by endorsing two people for the same position.
Next up was the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the sudden death of Lindsey Graham and the conventional wisdom that no one could replace him. Except, that is, for his little sister, Darline Graham, who was adopted by her older brother when she was 13 and he was 22 after their parents died. Her grief over the loss of her brother has been palpable these past several weeks as she has navigated a political world that she says she never wanted to enter.
Until she did!
Within days of Lindsey Graham’s death at 71 from an aortic dissection due to cardiovascular disease, McMaster tapped Darline Graham to fill in until her brother’s term would have expired in January. She was to be an uncontroversial placeholder for a short time, during which a special election for the seat would be held.
Trump had more ambitious plans, however. He asked Graham to run for her brother’s seat, and in what must have been an emotion-fueled fugue state, she said yes. Suddenly, a real primary race was on with multiple Republican candidates. Still, it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to grab a rarely open Senate seat. Forget Donald Trump, in other words.
The race came down to three leading candidates: Graham, U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman and U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, the last of whom Trump had previously said he could support for the Senate seat. (Sorry, Rusty.) Graham finished ahead of the other two in the Aug. 11 election, but she didn’t win a majority and now faces Norman in a runoff on Tuesday. Fry, ever the good sport and a reliable Trump pleaser, quickly endorsed Graham.
Some South Carolinians have expressed their disapproval on social media of Trump’s meddling, with many noting that Senate seats shouldn’t be inherited and questioning Graham’s qualifications. But their angst may be inadequate to counter pro-Graham super PACs, such as Palmetto Action, which spent $1.26 million targeting Norman after the primary.
Norman, a commercial real estate developer and vice chair of the U.S. House Freedom Caucus, has minimal outside help and is using about $800,000 in personal loans to boost his campaign. A fiscal conservative, he emphasizes reducing federal spending.
Few people had ever heard of Darline Graham before her brother’s death, and she remains something of an enigma, despite a few public appearances and television ads. Some vaguely know that she’s an optician who also worked in various state agencies, and that she’s a mother, grandmother and advocate for people with disabilities. If they tuned in to her recent debate with Norman, they would also know that she’s nothing like her brother. When Newsmax anchor Greta Van Susteren asked her whether Taiwan and the South China Sea were important to national security, the senator candidly said: “I’m just going to be honest here. I’m not that informed on national security.”
Her vow to preserve her brother’s legacy while pushing for her own priorities creates a fine line she now must walk. But, in all honesty, her candidacy seems like a spoof — Trumpian in its audacity and absurd in its sentimentality. It’s almost enough to make a person want to secede from the state.
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