Dem
47
GOP
53
Well, things have certainly gotten interesting in South Carolina.
The last time we wrote about the special election to replace Lindsey Graham on the Republican ticket, businessman Mark Lynch was the only person who had filed paperwork to enter the race. Since then, he's been joined by three other men: Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman, and perennial candidate Duke Buckner. Meanwhile, Rep. Nancy Mace, showing more self-awareness than is typical for her, took a pass.
However, the real curveball is this. We presume that Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) chose Darline Graham Nordone, sister of Lindsey, as a placeholder—nobody can object to her pinch-hitting for her dead brother, and yet she's an amateur who is not going to try to win her own seat, right? Wrong. Over the weekend, for reasons known only to him, Donald Trump endorsed her as his preferred candidate. And shortly thereafter, Graham (who is using her maiden name right now, for obvious reasons) announced that she's in.
We really don't know what the implications of this development will be. On one hand, Graham will have wide name recognition by virtue of her brother, and by virtue of being the sitting U.S. Senator. Further, in Republican primaries in red states, Trump's endorsement is usually pretty impactful. On the other hand, voters tend to dislike appointed officeholders who did not "earn" their position. And Lindsey Graham was not terribly popular by the end of his career; he claimed a pretty pedestrian 56% of the vote in HIS primary.
There's been one poll of the (new) race, from Emerson. The pollster was trying to guess how the field would shake out, and so asked about some candidates who are still deciding (e.g., Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette) and some who are definitely out (e.g., Mace). With that caveat, here's how Emerson has it:
| Candidate | Pct. |
| Ralph Norman | 16% |
| Mark Lynch | 13% |
| Pamela Evette | 10% |
| Nancy Mace | 10% |
| Russell Fry | 9% |
| Henry McMaster | 8% |
| Darline Graham | 6% |
| Mark Sanford | 5% |
| Others | 5% |
Executive summary: It's a complete and total toss-up right now.
The one thing that this poll makes clear is that no candidate is likely to claim 50% of the vote in the first round of voting, which means a runoff. So, if you assume that Graham overcomes her slow start to make the runoff, then the question is whether she can hold on to the 56% of the vote that her brother got. Maybe she doesn't have his baggage, and will do even better than he did. Or maybe she will be dragged down a bit by not having earned the job, or by sexism, or both, and will do worse. We just don't know.
There's one other wrinkle. Federal law, specifically The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, requires ballots to be sent out 45 days before a federal election. That isn't going to happen here, for either the first round of voting or the second, since the entire process is set to unfold over 28 days. That means that, once the Republican candidate is chosen, someone could file a lawsuit declaring their selection to be invalid. Who knows what the courts would do with that, but the language of the statute is very clear. (Z)