South Carolina voters look like they’re choosing a Republican governor and a Democratic senator on Tuesday night. Only one of them was just called, and that’s the one that beat out President Donald Trump’s pick.
Democrat Annie Andrews, a now-former pediatrician, defeated Sen. Darline Graham, as called by CBS News, NBC News and Decision Desk HQ. She is the first Democrat to win a Senate race in South Carolina since Fritz Hollings in 1998, in a state Trump carried by 18 points in 2024.
On the same ballot, Republican Alan Wilson held a narrow lead in the governor’s race into Tuesday evening, but the race was not yet called at time of publication. Graham ran roughly 10 points behind him on the margin. Ticket-splitting has been rare elsewhere tonight, but in South Carolina, enough Republicans backed Wilson for governor and Andrews for Senate to cost Graham the seat.
Trump’s candidate from the start
Trump was involved at every step of Graham’s rise. After Lindsey Graham died in July, Trump lobbied Gov. Henry McMaster to appoint his sister, a political newcomer, to finish the term. She first described the job as a chance to finish her brother’s work. Days later, Trump posted “RUN, DARLINE, RUN!” on Truth Social and promised his “complete and total endorsement.” She announced her campaign on Fox News three days after that.
His endorsement got her through the primary, but barely at that. She was forced into a runoff with Republican Rep. Ralph Norman, which she won by less than 5 points.
As the general election tightened, Trump came back. He rallied for her in Pendleton on Oct. 21 and in Rock Hill a week later. “Lindsey is watching, and very proud of her!!!” he posted the morning of the Rock Hill rally. On Election Day, he called her “a spectacular person, and a true American Patriot.”
The rallies gave her a short-term lift. A Citadel poll found Andrews trailing by one point before the Pendleton rally, and Graham’s support 7 points higher among voters surveyed afterward. A New York Times/Siena poll in the final week showed the race tied.
A seat Trump’s allies held for decades
South Carolina Republicans had warned about Graham for months. In October, Dorchester County Republican Party Chairman CJ Westfall, a critic of her primary campaign, told CNN he expected Wilson to win by 10 to 12 points and Graham by just two to four. Slate’s Ben Jacobs reported that many in the party resented that she got the seat through nepotism, with Trump backing her because of his relationship with her brother. Some of them organized a write-in campaign for Norman.
Party money followed Trump into the state anyway. Senate Republicans’ main super PAC sent reinforcements to a seat it had never needed to defend. American Mission, the Republican arm of the AI industry’s Leading the Future super PAC network, put about $2.7 million behind her.
Andrews, meanwhile, made room for Republicans. She rarely campaigned with national Democrats, and a week before the election she picked up the endorsements of two former governors: David Beasley, a Republican, and Jim Hodges, a Democrat, The Hill reported. She also didn’t run against Trump. “I’m willing to work with anyone, including the president,” she told Queen City News in the final week.
Lindsey Graham ran against Trump in 2016 and became, as Fox News put it in 2020, one of his biggest supporters in the Senate. That year, Democrats spent more than $100 million trying to beat him and lost by 10 points. This year, Andrews raised $10.8 million, 60% of it from small donors. Before the race was called, Norman told Slate he was “Not surprised AT ALL!”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
