Lindsey Graham's Sister Heads to a Runoff Election for His Senate Seat

Darline Graham was appointed to fill the US Senate seat left empty by the death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, on July 11, 2026. On August 11, she competed in a special primary election in South Carolina to win the Republican Party's nomination for that seat. She came in first, but not with enough votes to win outright, so she advanced to a runoff — a second-round election held when no candidate gets a majority. The runoff is set for August 25, but as of the latest reporting, her opponent had not yet been decided. Three other candidates were within a single point of each other in final polling by the Trafalgar Group The Guardian.

Graham entered the race with strong backing from the Republican establishment. She had endorsements from Donald Trump, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. She argued that her three weeks of service in Washington had already produced results, pointing to her vote to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general — a vote she said was the deciding one — and the passage of a bill imposing sanctions on Russia The Guardian. Sanctions are penalties one country places on another to pressure it into changing its behavior.

The seat Lindsey Graham held since 2003 drew a crowded field of candidates. The late senator had won his party's nomination in the June 9 Republican primary with 57% of the vote before his death the following month Ballotpedia. The special primary that followed spanned all 46 counties in South Carolina SC Votes, and more than 61,000 people voted early. A court order on August 4 forced the state election commission to add another candidate to the ballot, adding last-minute confusion to an already tight schedule SC Votes.

Three main contenders were competing to face Graham in the runoff. Congressman Russell Fry had support from fellow South Carolina representatives Joe Wilson and Sheri Biggs, but some voters criticized him for running for the Senate while also trying to keep his current seat in the House of Representatives. Fry's campaign ran attack ads highlighting a comment Graham made in a debate that was favorable to datacenter development, and he compared her appointment to "DEI" — a reference to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, which Fry used as a criticism The Guardian.

Congressman Ralph Norman, who has served in Congress since 2017, had backing from many state legislators and a strong voter base in the Charlotte suburbs. His campaign focused on his support for the Save America Act, a Trump-backed bill that would require states to verify citizenship before registering someone to vote The Guardian.

Former Governor Mark Sanford, who led the state between two periods in Congress, campaigned on managing government spending and the rising federal debt The Guardian. Duke Buckner also appeared on the Republican primary ballot WWLTV.

The broader context here is how fast this race had to come together. Lindsey Graham's death in mid-July left only about four weeks before the special primary — an extremely short time for a statewide election in a state with 46 counties. Darline Graham's appointment by the governor meant she was already serving as a senator, but she had almost no voting record to point to. Her opponents tried to use that against her, while she tried to turn it into proof that she could get things done. The Blanche confirmation vote and the Russia sanctions bill gave her specific accomplishments to mention, but three weeks is a very short record to run on.

The close three-way fight for second place, with Fry, Norman, and Sanford separated by less than a point in the final poll, suggests that voters opposed to Graham are split among several candidates. If that split continues into the runoff, the key question will be whether Graham's eventual opponent can quickly bring those voters together. Fry's attacks on her appointment as "DEI" and her datacenter comment point to an effort to shift the conversation away from her legislative work and toward questions about identity and qualifications. Whether that approach works with a Republican electorate that broadly supported Trump's endorsements across the state's party leadership is the open question heading into August 25.

After the August 11 primary, hand-count audits were done in randomly selected precincts. The Election Commission posted unofficial results in real time on election night through scVOTES.gov SC Votes.