Graham says her brother is ‘looking down,’ smiling as she makes runoff for SC GOP bid

U.S. Sen. Darline Graham and U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman will go head-to-head in a runoff to succeed the late Lindsey Graham, according to Associated Press reports.

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Graham finished first with more than 32% of the vote, according to state Election Commission results. The race was called for Graham advancing first around 8:20 p.m. Tuesday, more than an hour after polls closed at 7 p.m. All results are unofficial.

Exactly one month after her brother’s sudden death, Graham found out she made the runoff to replace him on the November ballot.

“I want to say this is a very emotional night because I’m usually standing here celebrating Lindsey,” Graham said on Tuesday night. “So I know he’s looking down right now, smiling.” Graham told reporters she has not had a lot of time to process her brother’s death yet.

Graham she would advocate for conservative values and support President Donald Trump, if elected.

“When President Trump and others asked me to run for a full term in the Senate, I prayed hard about it,” Graham said. “I knew I could not sit on the sidelines. That’s not how Lindsey and I were raised. That’s not who I am. I’m a fighter.”

Norman finished second with more than 24% of the vote, and the AP predicted he would advance to the runoff just after 9 p.m. Tuesday.

“I’m excited for South Carolina,” Norman told supporters Tuesday. “I’m excited for freedom. I’m excited to take another two weeks and just tell our message.”

An Aug. 25 runoff was triggered because no candidate received more than 50% of votes in Tuesday’s primary.

Lindsey Graham served in the U.S. Senate for nearly four, six-year terms, holding powerful allyships and leadership positions. His death July 11 spurred a quick special primary where 10 candidates campaigned for the rarely open nomination the late senator won outright in June.

Now, Graham and Norman will vie for the Republican nomination in what already has been a multimillion dollar race.

The winner of the runoff will compete against Democratic nominee Annie Andrews in November.

U.S. Reps. Russell Fry, Upstate businessman Mark Lynch and former governor Mark Sanford were among those competing for the nomination.

Walterboro attorney Duke Buckner, Upstate farmer Danny Ford II, former Myrtle Beach mayor Mark McBride, retired budget analyst Glenda Gail Parker and Lexington County biologist Samuel Shepherd also ran unsuccessfully.

Graham, the younger sister of Lindsey Graham, was appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster days after Lindsey Graham’s sudden death to finish out her brother’s term. McMaster did not appoint Graham with the intention for her to compete for a full term, though it wasn’t unexpected, the governor told reporters on Tuesday.

“I’m not surprised because that often happens,” McMaster said. “But when I appointed her, I was not asking her to continue. But that, of course, is up to her.”

Graham is the first woman to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate. She was endorsed by Trump, a close ally and friend of her brother. Graham has never been elected to public office, but she beat back a former two-term governor and congressman and another House member in Tuesday’s primary.

“No one can ever fill his [Lindsey Graham’s] shoes, and I don’t just expect it to be handed to me,” Graham said after voting with her family in Lexington on Tuesday. “I know, again, that I have to earn people’s votes.”

Graham told reporters she wanted to continue her brother’s legacy but asserted she would be different from him. Lindsey Graham, who served in the U.S. Air Force for 33 years, was heavily involved in foreign policy, but Darline Graham said she would focus on affordability if elected.

“I’ve struggled for several years, just like everyone else does, so I’m more about the affordability because I know how it feels to have to work paycheck to paycheck,” Graham told reporters in West Columbia on Aug. 10.

Norman is a member of the far right U.S. House Freedom Caucus and earlier this year ran for governor. He finished third in the governor primary after spending more than $5 million of his own money. He’s poured $400,000 into his U.S. Senate bid so far.

The congressman, who backed Nikki Haley over Trump for president ahead of the 2024 primary, is running as a deficit hawk and advocating for less government spending.

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Asked how he would distinguish himself from Graham in the runoff, Norman said he plans to press her to spell out where she stands on key conservative issues, including abortion, the death penalty and federal spending. He said he hopes a debate will give voters a chance to compare their records and priorities directly. Graham said Tuesday evening she would be willing to debate Norman.

“My record is an open book,” Norman said. “You know what I’ve done, and I will continue that.”

Graham, 62, led the state Commission for the Blind since 2019. She lives in Lexington County with her husband and has two daughters.

She spent a bulk of the time ahead of the election in Washington, D.C., before the U.S. Senate went home for August recess. She attended state GOP events in Lexington County and Florence, a debate in Columbia and met with voters in West Columbia on Monday morning, describing the campaign schedule as “brutal.”

Norman, 73, lives in York County. He has represented the 5th Congressional District since 2017 but is not running for reelection.

Norman spent months campaigning for governor statewide, an advantage going into the U.S. Senate primary because it increased his recognizability for voters out of the 5th Congressional District.

Fry, who finished third, represents the Pee Dee and Grand Strand in Congress. He was also running for reelection to the U.S. House.

His campaign focused in part on affordability and backing Trump in Washington, D.C. Fry had broad support from members of the South Carolina General Assembly, including at least 40 endorsements and several large donations, according to his campaign and Federal Election Commission reports.

The Grand Strand congressman finished first in several counties in his district but did not pick up enough support statewide to advance to a runoff.

“While tonight we ran out of runway, we are incredibly proud of everything this campaign accomplished and every single South Carolinian who believed in our mission fighting for families,” Fry said in a statement. “We have absolutely no regrets.”

Before entering the U.S. Senate race, former governor Sanford, who lives in Mount Pleasant, said he planned to start a nonprofit that would focus on addressing the nation’s rising debt and budget deficit. While campaigning last week in Columbia, Sanford recreated a stunt from 2004 where he brought pigs to the State House to protest what he sees as government overspending.

Sanford finished fourth Tuesday.

“I will work for everything that I’m worth through this nonprofit that we’re going to start, trying to focus on bringing focus and attention to what I think is a threat to every one of our lives, to a threat to affordability, to a threat to the American way of life and ultimately American civilization, and so one chapter closes, another one opens, and I look forward to that new chapter,” Sanford said in his remarks from Charleston on Tuesday night.

The election took place less than two weeks after Lindsey Graham was buried in Pickens County, following a funeral in Columbia.

“I have buried my precious brother,” Graham said Tuesday evening. “I have taken on the role of the United States senator, and I have had this brutal campaign schedule. And I’m still standing.”

Andrews, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, has been campaigning without a Republican opponent for the last month. Several Republican candidates have emphasized affordability for South Carolinians in their campaigns, but Andrews said supporting Trump’s agenda is at odds with the priority.

“They [voters] can see that you can’t be aligned with Donald Trump and also pretend to take the affordability crisis seriously,” Andrews said Tuesday afternoon.

Nearly 319,000 voted in the Republican governor race runoff earlier this summer, and 465,000 cast a ballot in the GOP U.S. Senate primary on June 9. Turnout for the Aug. 11 primary exceeded the governor runoff total, nearly 335,000, according to preliminary results.

McMaster hasn’t publicly backed a U.S. Senate candidate during the special primary, but he did not rule out endorsing in the runoff. He said the next U.S. senator should be willing to work hard and have an understanding of what’s going on in the country.

“Some of them have more experience or more knowledge than others,” McMaster told reporters on Tuesday, before polls closed. “But again, it’s important that you have the ability and the willingness to learn.”

McClatchy reporters John Monk and Joseph Bustos contributed to this article.

This story was originally published August 11, 2026 at 6:43 PM with the headline “Graham says her brother is ‘looking down,’ smiling as she makes runoff for SC GOP bid.”

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