Sen. Lindsey Graham’s battle to hold onto the Senate seat he’s kept warm for 17-years suffered another setback Monday when The State — South Carolina’s oldest paper — endorsed his Democratic opponent Jaime Harrison.
“We started as a 17-point underdog. Today, I’m honored to accept the endorsement of the oldest newspaper in South Carolina,” Harrison tweeted Monday. “Change is coming, folks.”
In addition to being the Palmetto State’s oldest newspaper, The State is also one of its largest. While stating Harrison “isn’t a perfect candidate” and that voting for him over a powerful senator like Graham is a leap of faith, the paper pulled the trigger.
“By running a Senate campaign that has been moored by sensible positions and a level-headed temperament, Harrison has proven himself worthy of that leap by South Carolina’s voters,” the editorial board argued.
Harrison has raised significantly more campaign money than Graham, who used free airtime on Fox News in August to beg for cash.
“I’m getting overwhelmed,” Graham pleaded on the right-wing cable channel. “Help me, they’re killing me money wise, help me.”
Polls have shown the incumbent and the challenger locked in a tight race with early voting already underway.
Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has come under fire for pushing through the appointment of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett despite insisting on previous occasions that justices should not be voted on in an election year.
A one-time critic of the president, Graham said President Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot” during the 2016 campaign. He has since become one of the president’s strongest allies.
According to the Post and Carrier, more South Carolinians voted in the 2016 election than in any other. The state is reportedly on track to break that record in 2020.
Graham tweeted that he was “honored” to accept that paper’s nomination Saturday.
The State, a broadsheet founded in 1891, endorsed Graham in June’s Republican primary. Its editorial board called the influential senator the “obvious choice” in that race.
