Does Anybody Know Who Darline Graham Is?
The lobbyist Jim Merrill’s long tenure as a Republican state representative in South Carolina means that he knows pretty much every person of relevance to the state’s politics. Between 2001 and 2017, when he resigned, Merrill represented the Ninety-ninth District in the state House; for four of those years, he was its majority leader. In 2016, he managed the local arm of Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign. Recently, though, he and I discussed an up-and-comer about whom he knew surprisingly little. “I’ve ran a zillion campaigns in South Carolina,” he said. “And to not really know her is . . .”
The “her” he was referring to is Darline Graham, the longtime senator Lindsey Graham’s sister, who was appointed to replace her brother in the Senate when he died, on July 11th, at the age of seventy-one. Until then, Darline Graham had been a professional advocate for the blind, with no legislative experience. She has since become the first woman to hold this particular office, and only the third person to do so since 1956. Most signs suggest that when Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, chose Graham to fill her brother’s vacant seat, his intention was for her to merely keep it warm until January, when the term expires and whoever wins the scheduled midterm Senate election takes it over. Then, on July 20th, Darline Graham announced that she would be running in that election.
On X, Graham framed her candidacy as a matter of “stepping forward to carry my brother Lindsey’s legacy.” Since then, she has campaigned minimally and only rarely given sit-down interviews. In late July, she told Sean Hannity, “Will it be difficult? Yes, absolutely.” Still, she said, “I’ve made a decision: I’m in.” Perhaps her determination had something to do with the fact that, three days earlier, Trump had posted on Truth Social that Graham “has been a WINNER all of her life and, should she accept, has my Complete and Total Endorsement.” What she’d “won” at, or otherwise done to prepare for the job, Trump did not say. Nevertheless, he continued, “SHE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN. RUN, DARLINE, RUN!”
So who, exactly, is the woman Trump hopes will become the next elected senator from South Carolina? A local Republican strategist, who worked with Lindsey for years, told me, of his sister, “It’s anybody’s guess.” The strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, went on, “I mean, you would assume she is Lindsey’s sister and so she’s conservative, right? When it comes to the hard issues, I don’t think anybody has clues.” South Carolina’s Democrats, who have not won statewide office since 2006, are also confounded. “She is a black box,” Boyd Brown, a Democratic former state legislator, told me. “She really truly is an unknown. She could be the greatest U.S. senator we’ve ever had, for all we know, but she could also be a total dud.”
“Nobody has a bad word to say about her,” Merrill observed. “But I also haven’t heard anybody say that she’s a perfect fit for the job. I think she’s just gonna have to fight off that nepotism thing.” (Nepotism-themed memes about Graham have lately started to circulate on social media. A popular one shows a closeup of her face with the caption “NepoSeat™. The family plan for public office.”) Merrill noted that her brother had been seeking a fifth term. “As much as everyone respected and loved Lindsey, there was a little bit of tiredness of that as well,” he said. “She might have to deal with that fatigue.” Sean Davis, the co-founder of the right-wing news site the Federalist, expressed the same idea slightly differently, in an X post simply reading “Birthright senatorship is idiotic.”
On August 11th, South Carolina held a special election to choose a replacement for Lindsey on the ballot. His sister received the most votes, at thirty-two per cent—presumably due in large part to Trump’s support and her maiden name—but not enough to win outright in the ten-candidate field, which also included a former governor, an Air Force reservist, a biomedical engineer, a real-estate broker, and a farmer. In second place was Ralph Norman, a sitting congressman who has said that the January 6th insurrection was “made up,” opposed certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, and once displayed a loaded gun during a meeting with activists from the anti-gun-violence advocacy group Moms Demand Action. Graham and Norman will compete in a runoff on August 25th, the results of which will determine who will face the Democratic candidate, a pediatrician named Annie Andrews, in November. “Normally, we advise that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know,” the strategist told me. “But in this case the devil I know”—Norman—“is something I don’t necessarily want: a seventy-four-year-old starting as a freshman in the Senate. At best, he’s got one term. But can I take a chance on the devil that I don’t know?”
Some things, of course, are known about Darline Graham. She is sixty-two, has two children, and has been married for twenty years to a man named Larry Nordone. Until now, Nordone’s occupation has not been reported, but when I contacted Graham’s campaign I was told that Nordone is the chief operating officer of two companies: Cosmox North America, which operates a number of brands centered on guns, both lethal and nonlethal, including one called Gel Blaster and another called Havoc Striker; and Birchwood Trading, which, according to Graham’s campaign, sells “John Deere products—like gift products, not equipment.”
For much of her career, Graham has worked with disabled people. Before that, she was an optician. She grew up with Lindsey in Central, a small town in the northwest corner of South Carolina where their parents—who had both died by the time she was thirteen and he was twenty-two—ran a pool hall, bar, and restaurant. Upon their father’s death, Lindsey became Darline’s legal guardian. The available evidence suggests that they were very close. In 2015, Lindsey—a lifelong bachelor—quipped that, if he were elected President, his sister could be his First Lady.
Darline Graham, since announcing her run, has tried to establish some convictions. She calls herself a conservative Republican. In her first campaign ad, she announced that she is anti-abortion and against transgender women competing in girls’ sports. She supports sanctions on Russia, ending the filibuster, and stricter voter-I.D. laws. In general, though, she’s been a relatively quiet candidate. When cornered by members of the press and asked about the minutiae of judicial nominations in a congressional elevator recently, she stayed mum. Her reticence could be strategic. “I think it’s probably smart to minimize media, because she’s got a real steep learning curve,” the strategist told me. “If the hard press starts drilling down on the issues, there’s a high probability she’ll stumble.” But her quietness may also be temperamental. Susan John, the current chair of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, where Graham has been a commissioner, told me that Graham was “levelheaded” and “fair.” She gently conceded that Graham does not have the sense of humor that her brother was known for—“I would say Darline’s maybe a little more reserved in that capacity”—but John trusts Graham’s judgment. “She’s going to weigh what information she has and make the best business decision that she can,” she said. “She’s not going to sugarcoat things.” Was she, too, surprised that Graham had decided to run for a full term? “I don’t know,” John said. “I think there’s a lot of pressure for her to run.”
A former Lindsey Graham staffer named Tyson Grinstead spent some time with Darline when she joined her brother on trips and at sporting events. According to him, Graham is, unsurprisingly, a South Carolina Gamecocks fan. “She’s just sort of, like, a regular person,” Grinstead told me. “She’s a mom, and she’s just very similar to any Southern mom out there in South Carolina, or probably in Georgia as well.” I asked Grinstead whether Graham’s position as a senator would resemble Lindsey’s. Grinstead noted two areas of similarity: first, “affordability issues,” and second, Chick-fil-A. “She definitely aligns with Senator Graham on his love for Chick-fil-A.”
A week before the runoff, seeking more clues, I dropped into the Seneca Family Restaurant, in Seneca, South Carolina, where Lindsey Graham often ate. “He came by every chance he got,” the owner and cook, George Bakogiannis, told me. “He ordered hamburger steak, okra, and turnip greens.” Bakogiannis had seen Darline there, but not frequently enough to remember her order. “She was fun,” he said. “They supported us.” Still, someone had put a Ralph Norman sign on the grass out front.
I chatted up some patrons. “Can’t say anything bad about somebody who you don’t know anything about,” a Jet Ski builder named Elijah told me, referring to Graham. “People I know who liked Lindsey, though—they say they voted for him, not her.”
Nearby, two older men were eating. “I wish Trump would quit endorsing people without fully vetting them,” a retired nuclear-power-plant employee named Mark, who was wearing a “U.S.A.” ball cap and a T-shirt emblazoned with the American flag, told me. Mark described himself as “conservative as long as I can remember.” He was eating with Tommy, a retired forester. “I don’t know her any more than anybody else,” Tommy said, motioning around. “She goes by Graham, not Nordone. So that’s kind of weird.”
“I decided I’m going for Ralph Norman, because at least you know what you’re going to get,” Mark said. Tommy agreed. Lindsey Graham, Tommy added disapprovingly, making a flip-flopping hand gesture, was “a fish.”
Later that day, a hundred miles southeast, in Newberry, a debate between Graham and Norman was held. They mostly agreed on the issues—both showed some measure of skepticism about data centers, both voiced support for Israel. In response to a question about Taiwan, though, Graham admitted that she was “not that informed on national security,” and the audience booed. “I’m not a polished politician up here,” Graham said, in defense. Later, she criticized Norman for seeming to prefer D.C. over South Carolina, despite the fact that he ran for governor earlier this year.
The strategist laughed when I asked whether the debate had changed his take on the race. “To me, it just reflected what a not-so-good choice we’re gonna have next Tuesday,” he said. Despite how little is known about her, he gives the edge to Graham. “It’s two things,” he told me, referring to the challenge before Norman. “You’re fighting Trump and you’re fighting Lindsey’s ghost. She doesn’t have to go and find that many votes to get fifty per cent.” ♦