Today’s South Carolina Primary Heading To Likely Runoff

By Mike Rudin

Graham is the name to watch in today’s special South Carolina Republican primary.  It’s the first step in the process of replacing Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died July 11th.  His sister, Darline Graham, was appointed to fill the seat by Gov. Henry McMaster, a temporary replacement at first, until she announced, in a surprise, she wants to run for the full term.  She has President Trump’s full endorsement.

Also running are  Rep. Ralph Norman, who lost the GOP primary for governor in June; another congressman, Russell Fry; former governor and congressman Mark Sanford; and Mark Lynch, a businessman who challenged Lindsey Graham in the Senate primary and got close to 30%.  Trump’s endorsement is a big deal in this race, though it should be pointed out that in last Thursday’s Tennessee primary, Trump-backed Rep. Andy Ogles, a rightwing firebrand, was defeated by Charlie Hatcher, the state’s former agriculture commissioner.  In any event, with five major candidates in the race, South Carolina Republicans are likely to trek to the polls once more, in two weeks, for a runoff between the top two finishing candidates.

Darline Graham is considered the frontrunner, but she has spent a good portion of the past month not campaigning in the Palmetto State and getting better known but in Washington, doing Senate business and where her vote on the Todd Blanche nomination was needed in a closely-divided Senate.  That was why she failed to appear in the second GOP debate, on Aug. 4th.  Unlike the first debate, held the night before, the second event was not only without Darline but without most of South Carolina’s press corps.  Aside from Nexstar Media Group, which hosted and broadcast the debate on their local stations (WCBD Charleston, WSPA Spartanburg/Greenville, WBTW Florence/Myrtle Beach, and WJBF Augusta, GA, which also serves Aiken and parts of western South Carolina), coverage was nearly non-existent.  Perhaps some news cycle fatigue after Monday’s debate?  Perhaps because Graham’s absence sapped the attention?  Heck, it could have been something else.  After all, it is peak sea turtle hatching season right now.  Whatever the reason, unless people were watching local programming, they probably didn’t know there was a debate.

But there was.  For a little more than an hour, the four major candidates talked about the economy, foreign wars, working with Trump (and not Majority Leader John Thune), and how they differed from Lindsey Graham.  The debate was like the proverbial tree falling in the forest.  Meanwhile, a poll by The Trafalgar Group, conducted Aug. 8-10, found Graham leading with 26.4%, followed by Norman with 19.5%, Fry with 18.4% and Sanford with 18.3%.  (Lynch had  7.5%.)  Conventional wisdom suggests Graham will make it to the Aug. 25th runoff, but the fight for second place is too close to call.  And the winner of that runoff is all but assured of victory in November.  The Democratic nominee is Dr. Annie Andrews, but South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Fritz Hollings won his final term in 1998.  That is not about to change.

(Check out last week’s Episode #431 of the Political Junkie podcast for a full segment on the race.)

Reach me at mike@krpoliticaljunkie.com

The post Today’s South Carolina Primary Heading To Likely Runoff appeared first on Ken Rudin's Political Junkie.