Lindsey Graham

Lindsey Graham (born July 9, 1955, Seneca, South Carolina, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2002 and began representing South Carolina the following year. He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1995–2003).

Early life and military career

Graham’s parents owned a pool hall, bar, and liquor store in Central, South Carolina, the town where Graham grew up. He attended the University of South Carolina (B.A., 1977; J.D., 1981), the first member of his family to go to college. While he was a student there, his parents died some 15 months apart, leaving Graham to raise his sister, Darline Graham, nine years his junior; he eventually became her legal guardian. After graduating, Lindsey Graham, who had been a member of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps in college, entered the air force, becoming a military lawyer, or advocate. He was assigned to Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Germany, serving there from 1984 to 1988.

After leaving active duty, Graham returned to South Carolina and became assistant county attorney (1988–92) for Oconee county and later city attorney (1990–94) for Central. He also joined the South Carolina Air National Guard, serving from 1989 to 1995. He returned to active duty during the Persian Gulf War (1990–91) and served in the Air Force Reserves with the rank of colonel until 2015.

Politics

Graham was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives for a single term from 1992 to 1994. He then ran for and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives—the first time a Republican had been elected from South Carolina’s third congressional district since Reconstruction. When U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond retired in 2002, Graham ran for his seat, winning the general election with more than 54 percent of the vote. He took office in 2003.

Graham’s time in the House and Senate showed him to be a moderate Republican, although he declared himself to be a Reagan-style conservative. He often advocated military intervention abroad and strongly opposed budget cuts aimed at defense spending. He also opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and associated health-care reform legislation championed by the administration of Pres. Barack Obama. Although Graham typically voted with his party’s leadership, he gained a reputation for bipartisanship and a willingness to compromise, and he broke with Republicans on several points. Notably, he became a proponent of increased legal immigration and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

2016 presidential election and Donald Trump

In June 2015 Graham announced that he was entering the U.S. presidential election race of 2016. However, he garnered little support—low poll numbers led to his exclusion from the main Republican debates—and in December he suspended his campaign. He later was critical of the party’s eventual nominee, Donald Trump, who ultimately won the general election. After Trump took office in 2017, however, Graham became one of his most vocal supporters, and he moved farther right on various issues. In 2019 Graham became head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, overseeing the confirmation of numerous conservative judges, perhaps most notably—and controversially—Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett just eight days before the 2020 election; Graham had previously supported the Republicans’ decision not to vote on Obama’s Supreme Court pick in 2016, citing the fact that there was an election that year. Graham also made headlines in 2019 with his vocal defense of Trump during the latter’s impeachment by the House. In the subsequent Senate trial, Graham voted not to convict the president, who was acquitted in a nearly party-line vote in 2020.

Graham’s close ties to Trump fueled Democratic efforts to unseat him in 2020. However, although his opponent received record-setting donations, Graham ultimately prevailed in November. In the presidential election, Trump was defeated by Joe Biden but refused to concede, alleging voter fraud despite a lack of evidence to support the claim. Graham supported Trump, and he called Georgia’s secretary of state to reportedly discuss the procedure for invalidating mail-in votes; Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes. On January 6, 2021, Graham and other members of Congress met to certify Biden’s victory. The proceeding, however, was temporarily halted when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. It took several hours to end the violent assault, and, when Congress reconvened, Graham was among those who accused the president of inciting the attack. Biden was ultimately certified as the winner. The following week the House of Representatives impeached Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection.” The Senate trial was held after Trump left office, and Graham voted to acquit the former president; Trump was not convicted. Although Graham ultimately dismissed claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent, he encouraged Trump to run for president in 2024. During this time Georgia officials launched a criminal investigation into possible interference in the state’s 2020 election results, and Graham was subpoenaed to testify before a special grand jury in 2022.

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Later in 2022 Graham made news when he introduced a bill that would place a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The legislation came months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), which held that women had a constitutional right to abortions. Graham’s bill proved controversial, and it divided Republicans, some of whom thought the issue should be decided at the state level.