When President Trump stormed into American politics, he sought to tear down the hawkish Republican establishment represented by the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. His project was a smashing success.
Ten years later, in a quick effort that culminated last night, he pulled out all the stops to help the late senator’s sister, Darline Graham, claim her party’s nomination for Senate — all but ensuring that the Graham family remains a political fixture for at least the next six years.
What changed, of course, was not Trump but Lindsey Graham, who recalibrated his politics and wove himself into the president’s political establishment. It’s not that Trump blessed a new dynasty in the Grahams — he came to see both brother and sister as an indispensable part of his own.
“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” Trump told voters on Friday in Myrtle Beach, where he made a rare campaign stop for Darline Graham. “Just come and vote. It’s so important. So just say that I’m on the ballot one more time.”
It worked. Writing from South Carolina last night, my colleague Patricia Mazzei noted that Graham crushed her opponent, the ultraconservative contrarian Representative Ralph Norman, in Horry County, where the president had rallied. The president’s super PAC spent more than $800,000 on the race, too, lighting up Republican voters’ phones with text messages urging them to support Graham.
Graham was weakest in the conservative Upstate region in the state’s northwest. That also happens to be where she and her brother were from. But was the race really about them?
“South Carolina is truly Trump country,” Graham said at her election night party.
In a way, it’s fitting that Graham’s big debate-stage gaffe, when she admitted to being “not that informed on national security,” in response to a question about Taiwan, turned on the issue of foreign policy.
That was long a focus for Lindsey Graham, of course, and it’s something Norman tried to seize on, writing on Facebook, “South Carolina deserves a Senator who UNDERSTANDS Foreign Policy.” But it’s also the very issue Trump has pushed out of his party’s top concerns.
The big question coming out of last night is not so much what happens in November for Darline Graham, who is heavily favored to win in her deeply red state.
It’s the question of who else in her party can draw this kind of support from the president and his extravagantly well-funded but — thus far — parsimonious super PAC.
The Grahams offer a road map for what it takes to get, and keep, the president’s support going forward: Join the dynasty, and allow him to make your race about himself.
IN ONE GRAPHIC
A Supreme Court ruling this week allowing the Trump administration to move ahead with plans to restrict mail ballots could have enormous consequences for the country, which has become increasingly dependent on voting by mail. Nearly a third of voters across the nation used the method in the most recent midterm and presidential elections.
number of the day
73 percent
That’s the favorability rating among Republicans for Senator John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat, according to an eye-opening new poll of his state from The Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena University. Fetterman’s habit of sharply critiquing his own party has caused his standing with Democrats to plummet.
ONE LAST THING
Alaskan parents, please think of more creative names
Two Dan Sullivans, or two Dans Sullivan — what’s the correct plural?
Alaskans will keep debating that question after Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, won a spot on the general-election ballot last night in the state’s important Senate race. Republicans worry that he could siphon votes away from their incumbent senator, Dan S. Sullivan.
Confused? A third Dan Sullivan is here to clear things up. A Republican former mayor of Anchorage with the same name endorsed the sitting senator this month: “As the OG Dan Sullivan, I urge Alaskans to vote for Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan,” he said. “He’s been great for Alaska.”
