Can Lindsey Graham lose South Carolina?
NORTH CHARLESTON: An epic political battle is cresting in South Carolina, where Senator Lindsey Graham, a presidential ally, is neck-and-neck with an African-American challenger two decades his junior, raising Democratic hopes of snatching a Senate seat in Trump country. Out-fundraised by Democrat Jaime Harrison, and glued to Donald Trump’s hip on issues like immigration and Supreme Court nominations, Graham is under threat like never before in a state where his Republican Party has controlled the local legislature, governor’s mansion and both US Senate seats for at least the last 15 years.
With Trump’s fortunes sinking along with his poll numbers, Democrats are eyeing potential flips in several other states as they seek to reclaim control of the Senate. But suddenly South Carolina - a traditionally conservative bastion that Harrison describes as a legacy of the slave-holding “old South” - is in play, despite Graham’s repeated claims that both he and Trump will win re-election in 17 days.
“Lindsey Graham’s scared,” Harrison told a crowd Saturday in North Charleston, where supporters honked their approval at a drive-in campaign event to allow social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. “He is nervous, and he should be,” the 44year-old Harrison added. “Because the people of South Carolina are about to give him a one-way ticket back home!”
‘Rise like a phoenix’
A Harrison victory would send shock waves through American politics, notably because South Carolina - where the opening shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861 - would become the first US state ever represented by two Black senators at the same time. The state’s other senator, Tim Scott, is Republican. Harrison, whose aunt died of Covid-19 this year, recalled growing up in poverty, doing his homework in the dark when his family could not pay the electricity bill. “I know what hard times is,” the Yale graduate and former head of the South Carolina Democratic Party said, invoking the lilt of his grandparents who helped raise him. “On November 3, the people of South Carolina are going to close the book on the old south, and write a brand new book called the ‘New South,’” one of boldness, diversity and inclusion, Harrison said as the car horns reached a crescendo.
“And out of the ashes, we will rise like a phoenix.” Deserted parking lot
With his position at risk, the 65-year-old Graham campaigned Friday in the Palmetto State, stepping off a campaign bus bearing a larger-than-life image of the senator - only to highlight how he is being outspent by Harrison, who raised a staggering record $57 million in the third quarter. “Help me pay for the bus!” he pleaded, only half-jokingly, to a few dozen supporters in an otherwise deserted parking lot near Charleston.
Most of them appeared to be connected to Graham’s campaign or the party apparatus, offering a striking contrast to the rowdier Harrison campaign event. Why is a conservative star who has the president’s ear and is helping guide Trump’s nominee onto the Supreme Court in any jeopardy in ruby red South Carolina?