By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Darline Graham, sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, won the Republican primary runoff in South Carolina for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, according to U.S. media projections, in a triumph for President Donald Trump.
Graham, who was appointed to hold the Senate seat until the beginning of January following her brother’s death on July 11, defeated Representative Ralph Norman and will run in November’s election for a full, six-year Senate term.
Trump endorsed her candidacy and backed that up with large campaign contributions from his MAGA INC super PAC.
Rallying for her on Friday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Trump placed the spotlight on himself and proclaimed, “I am on the ballot.”
Graham, 62, will face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in the general election and is expected to prevail easily in the deeply conservative state.
This primary was one of a series of tests of Trump’s sway with voters in this year’s midterm elections, as he tries to use his bully pulpit to prevent Democrats from wresting control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate from his Republican party.
But his record of endorsements this cycle has been mixed, with polls showing he continues to be weighed down by rising consumer prices and an unpopular war with Iran.
Trump’s MAGA INC., spent $827,711 in support of Graham, according to its filing on Monday with the Federal Election Commission, in a rare instance of the president putting financial support behind his favored candidate.
For her part, Graham used Friday’s rally to try to recover from what has been cast as an earlier debate misstep when she said she was not knowledgeable about national security issues – the kind that helped define her brother’s career in the Senate.
“Guilty as charged,” Graham proclaimed at the rally. Instead, she focused her remarks on domestic issues, including Trump’s immigration clampdown and anti-abortion advocacy.
She had never held public office until her appointment to the Senate, having previously held positions advocating for persons with physical disabilities.
South Carolina has overwhelmingly embraced Trump in all three of his runs for president and is not likely to play a role in the battle for the control of Congress.
Norman, 73, a longtime real estate developer, has spent nearly a decade in the U.S. House. His defeat on Tuesday comes on the heels of an unsuccessful bid for governor.
He has been a leading member of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, but endorsed the more moderate Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, in her 2024 failed presidential bid.
Earlier this month, Graham and Norman were the two top vote-getters in the Republican primary’s 10-candidate field, but neither garnered enough support to avoid Tuesday’s runoff.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Nolan D. McCaskill; Editing by Michael Learmonth, Alistair Bell and Stephen Coates)
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