Darline Graham wins South Carolina GOP nomination to replace her late brother in US Senate
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Senator Darline Graham has won the Republican nomination to replace her late brother, Lindsey, on South Carolina’s general election ballot.
Her success marks another win for president Donald Trump after he threw his support behind the political novice.
Graham defeated US representative Ralph Norman in Tuesday’s special Republican primary runoff, two weeks after they were the top two finishers in a 10-way primary.
With nearly all of the ballots counted, Graham had received 52.4% of the vote, according to the Associated Press, ahead of Norman’s 47.6%.
Lindsey Graham, a US senator for more than two decades, won the party’s primary in June, but died the next month. Days later, Darline Graham was appointed to serve out the remainder of her brother’s Senate term.
“The critics say I shouldn’t run for the Senate,” she told a rally audience Friday. “They say I’m not a politician. You know what I say? Guilty as charged.”
Graham will face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician from Charleston, in November. Andrews has tough historical odds; the last Democrat to win a statewide race in South Carolina was state superintendent Jim Rex in 2006.
Trump recommended Darline Graham for appointment; she is a longtime civil servant who led South Carolina’s Commission for the Blind and then encouraged her to run for a full term – shifting up plans within Republican circles to find a new Senate nominee.
“What I really want you to do is pretend – please – that I’m on the ballot,” Trump said at a rally in Myrtle Beach on Friday. “Just come and vote.” Trump’s Maga Inc Super Pac spent over $800,000 backing Graham during her campaign.
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In other developments:
The US supreme court lifted one of two injunctions that block the Trump administration from pressing ahead with a sweeping effort to restrict mail voting
The court’s decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”, justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a blistering dissent.
The NAACP, which sued in April to block the order restricting mail-in voting said that Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote this November because they “know full well that they are unpopular and will lose in a free and fair election”.
The Trump administration is preparing to revoke visas from up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for asylum status in America according to documents obtained by Associated Press from US state department officials.
Donald Trump responded to criticism regarding his new tariffs on Canadian imports from Ontario’s premier Doug Ford by making an unflattering comparison between him and his late brother Rob Ford-a former mayor of Toronto known primarily for smoking crack cocaine.
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent announced that America has initiated an “unprecedented” sanctions campaign against Iran “and its enablers”.
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US Senate Democrats have urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in a “surge” of violence by West Bank settlers and mass arrests of Palestinians by Israeli security forces within occupied territories according to reports by Reuters.
In their letter addressed to Netanyahu-seen by Reuters-the lawmakers pointed out increasing incidents of fatal violence stemming from settlers’ actions.
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Maya Yang
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