There are things a president can do in the week after a senator dies and there are things that cause the leadership of that senator’s state party to say “what the hell are we doing,” and Trump publicly jumping into the conversation about who should replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina’s Republican Senate primary is the second kind, producing a GOP civil war in a state that has not had time to hold a memorial service before fielding calls from the White House about preferred nominees.
Graham died Saturday of an aortic dissection at 71. Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to the seat on Monday to restore the 53-47 Republican Senate majority. Graham Nordone has no political record and was explicitly installed as a placeholder until the special election process produces a permanent senator. The special election timeline runs through August, with a primary on August 11 and a possible runoff August 25. Trump told Fox & Friends on Monday that he already had “a really good person in mind” for the seat, a statement he made on the day Graham died, which South Carolina GOP leadership had already processed as inappropriate before Trump escalated by making the preference more specific.
Per Raw Story’s confirmed reporting today, Trump’s decision to “leap into the conversation” about who should be the Republican nominee has South Carolina GOP leadership “fuming,” with party figures described as asking “what the hell are we doing” in response to the White House’s involvement in what is nominally a state party process. The specific fury involves both the timing, which is less than a week after Graham’s death, and the substance, which is Trump inserting himself into a state party primary where the established candidates include Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Rep. Russell Fry, neither of whom has been named as Trump’s preferred person, and both of whom are watching the situation with the specific attention of candidates who need Trump’s endorsement to win and who are not being endorsed.
Graham spent 23 years in the Senate as one of the chamber’s most reliable dealmakers, occasionally departing from Trump’s preferences and then returning to them, a pattern that Trump described as loyalty and Graham’s critics described as something more complicated. He died six days ago. He is being replaced by his sister in the interim and by someone Trump has decided on in the long term, and the South Carolina GOP is being consulted in the order that suggests.
The primary is August 11. Trump’s preferred candidate has not been named. Graham Nordone is in the seat. The state party is fuming.
When the president announces he has someone in mind for a senator’s seat on the day the senator dies and the state party asks “what the hell are we doing,” whose party is it?
Sources
Raw Story: ‘What the hell are we doing?’ Trump endorsement leaves GOP seething in Senate seat battle
