President Donald Trump demonstrated his might with Republican primary voters Tuesday in South Carolina, as CNN’s Decision Desk projected that Darline Graham — the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and the president’s pick in the state’s special Senate primary runoff — will claim the GOP nomination.
Now favored to win a full term in November, Darline Graham is, in many ways, a senator of Trump’s own making. The president lobbied South Carolina’s governor to appoint her to fill the remaining months in her brother’s term after he died in July. Then, he privately and publicly pressed her to run for a full six-year term.
And when it looked like her rival in the runoff, Rep. Ralph Norman, might win, Trump visited Myrtle Beach to rally Republican loyalists to Graham’s cause, as his super PAC, MAGA Inc., disclosed spending more than $827,000 to support Graham.
Graham’s win is narrow — she led by just a few percentage points Tuesday evening — but symbolically significant for the president in a month full of political setbacks, with six of his endorsed picks losing Republican primaries.
Trump’s preferred candidate in the Oklahoma governor’s race, former state Sen. Mike Mazzei, meanwhile, was locked in a close Republican primary runoff against state Attorney General Gentner Drummond as ballots were being counted Tuesday night.
