On the menu today: Republicans are nervous about South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, with lingering bitterness from the primary runoff, but history suggests they’re probably more nervous than they ought to be. Meanwhile, that Vivek Ramaswamy ad proved to be every bit as effective as predicted . . . for Amy Acton. The mid-decade redistricting that stirred up so much controversy may be moot, given the outlook for the handful of Republicans who won statewide primaries without President Trump’s endorsement. Read on.
Palmetto State Worries?
Thursday morning, Fox News moved South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race into the “toss-up” category. The latest New York Times poll ties incumbent Darline Graham, sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, and Democratic challenger Annie Andrews at 48 percent each. Trump held another rally in South Carolina Thursday, his third since late August.
In the Republican U.S. Senate primary runoff, Graham narrowly defeated GOP Representative Ralph Norman, 52 percent to 47 percent. He is . . . not eager to help Graham:
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who lost to Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., in a runoff for the Senate GOP nomination earlier this year, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that he has no plans to help Graham in the final week before Election Day.
“The voters in S.C. are not buying the argument that everyone has to ‘settle’ for a candidate that has been propped up by special interest groups and a Republican president spending millions of dollars spreading false narratives about why Darlene [sic] Graham is qualified to be elected to the U.S. Senate for the next six years,” Norman told Fox News Digital via text message in all capital letters.
He said the general election “is about attempts to ‘force’ a candidate on the voters of S.C. and regardless of the outcome, it didn’t have to be this way as the great people living in South Carolina deserve ‘better!!’”
Warren Norman, the representative’s son, wrote an op-ed Thursday declaring that he would not vote for Graham:
I have sat down with Annie Andrews. We disagree on a lot. We also agree on some important things, including fighting corruption and reforming insurance. She struck me as genuine, and she has said publicly that she’ll stand up to her own party. That is the standard I’m asking of every candidate, and I intend to hold her to it. As of today, I’m leaning her way. It will be the first time in my life I’ve voted for a Democrat in a partisan election.
I know the concern many conservatives will have: isn’t a vote against Graham a vote for the liberal agenda? I’ve thought hard about that. Unfortunately, there is no true conservative to vote for in this election.
No doubt, some Republicans will accuse Ralph Norman of not being a team player. (In the U.S. House, he voted with his party’s position 96.2 percent of the time in 2024 and 2025.) And perhaps he is, but it is hard to begrudge a man who’s been a Republican lawmaker for two decades for having some bitterness over losing a Senate nomination to a woman who had no discernible intention of ever running for any office until July of this year.
Few Republicans objected to the idea of Darline Graham serving out the final months of the Senate term of her late brother. But not many Republicans were clamoring for her to be the party’s 2026 nominee, at least at first. Before she was named her brother’s replacement, she had never run for office, given a policy speech, made floor remarks, or participated in an interview where she’s been pressed on specific legislative issues. In her runoff debate, she had an embarrassing moment where she confessed, “I’m just going to be honest here. I’m . . . not that informed on national security, so — but I do support the military.”
Darline Graham’s campaign to run for a full term was almost entirely driven by President Trump; in mid-July he publicly announced he had “asked Darline, for the Good of our Nation, to run for the U.S. Senate in the Special Republican Primary on Tuesday, August 11, 2026,” and then he pulled out all the stops to ensure she won the runoff:
In the weeks leading up to South Carolina’s primary election runoff for Senate on Tuesday, Mr. Trump traveled to Myrtle Beach to rally supporters and personally called high-level state officials to compel them to endorse Ms. Graham. A super PAC run by his advisers, MAGA Inc., notoriously wary to spend on races this cycle, invested nearly $800,000 on phone calls on her behalf, according to campaign finance filings released on Monday, nearly a third of the total the committee has spent this year. . . .
“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Myrtle Beach on Friday. “Just come and vote. It’s so important.”
Now, if I were forced to bet a lot on the outcome of this race — don’t bet! — I would bet on Graham winning. In 2020, a handful of polls showed Lindsey Graham tied with or barely ahead of Jaime Harrison; he won by more than ten points, and that was the closest statewide race in the past three cycles. South Carolina doesn’t register voters by party, but voting in recent primaries suggests the state has about 300,000 more folks who tend to vote in Republican primaries than Democratic ones. South Carolina hasn’t elected any Democratic candidate to statewide office since 2006, when Jim Rex won the superintendent of education race.
No doubt, Trump’s endorsement in a Republican primary counts for a lot. This cycle, he endorsed in 315 primaries, and 96 percent of the candidates he endorsed won their primaries.
However, this means the fact that Republicans are sweating the Senate race in South Carolina, and that they’ve spent or are planning to spend $20 million in advertising in this race, is a result of the president’s decisions.
Meanwhile, over in Ohio . . .
The Ohio gubernatorial race started extraordinarily early; on February 28, 2025, Vivek Ramaswamy announced he was running for the office. That day, President Trump gave him a full-throated endorsement: “Vivek is also a very good person, who truly loves our Country,” the president wrote. “He will be a GREAT Governor of Ohio, will never let you down, and has my COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT!”
A couple of not-well-known candidates challenged Ramaswamy in the primary, but between his personal fortune and Trump’s endorsement, it wasn’t even close; Ramaswamy won more than 82 percent of the vote.
When my colleagues and I criticized that hideous ad from Ramaswamy, I seem to remember being told that only a RINO squish who didn’t have the guts to handle hardball politics would object. No less a figure than the vice president of the United States told everyone, “stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”
Well, how’s that ad working out so far?
The private poll, commissioned by a Republican group and obtained by Axios, found Acton leading Ramaswamy by eight points — up from a two-point lead in the same poll earlier this month, before the ad began circulating on Oct. 19.
The ad “is having a significant effect on the gubernatorial race,” a memo attached to the poll states.
Oh, is it now?
The Ramaswamy campaign apparently spent $4 million on an ad that makes people want to vote against him. Yesterday, Ramaswamy said the ad “ran to completion.”
Sometimes, the people who are telling you not to do something are not being “disloyal” in the president’s words, or “RINOs.” Sometimes, the people who are telling you not to do something have a better sense of the likely consequences and are trying to prevent you from exacerbating a mistake.
As for That Mid-Decade Redistricting . . .
Another big Trump agenda item over the past two years has been promoting mid-decade restricting whenever and wherever possible.
All that redistricting probably isn’t going to do much for Republicans; GOP-controlled state legislatures “redrew congressional boundaries to create up to 15 new Republican districts. Less than two weeks before the election, the Cook Political Report rates only five of them as Solid or Likely Republican.” Earlier this month, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told Axios that Republicans won’t win all 13 seats they’d hoped to gain from new maps. House Republican Conference chair Lisa McClain separately told Axios she thinks the Republicans will win eight to ten of them.
Meanwhile, Democrats are asking whether they even needed to pass their own partisan gerrymandered map in California, with the overall national outlook for the party looking so good in the congressional races.
If, as many expect, the midterms go badly for the GOP, there will be a lot of finger-pointing among Republicans. But Trump cannot claim that he did not get the candidates he wanted.
Would incumbent North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis be doing better than Michael Whatley in a matchup against Democratic former Governor Roy Cooper?
Would incumbent Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn be doing better than Ken Paxton in a matchup against James Talarico?
In how many races would a “generic Republican state legislator” be doing better or worse than the candidate Trump endorsed? Or is the national mood so opposed to Republicans that it wouldn’t have made a difference?
As for those handful of races where the Trump-endorsed candidate did not win the GOP primary:
- Trump wanted Randy Feenstra to be the Iowa gubernatorial nominee; Zach Lahn currently looks like an underdog against Democrat Rob Sand.
- Trump wanted Burt Jones to be the Georgia gubernatorial nominee; up until recently, Rick Jackson was enjoying a narrow lead against Democratic former mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms.
- Trump endorsed State Superintendent Megan Degenfelder to be governor of Wyoming; state senator Eric Barlow is a safe bet in November.
- In South Carolina, Trump wanted Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette to be the gubernatorial nominee; Alan Wilson is all but guaranteed to be the next Republican governor of South Carolina.
- In Minnesota’s governor’s race, Lisa Demuth has consistently trailed Senator Amy Klobuchar. Trump’s endorsed choice, MyPillow guy Mike Lindell, would almost certainly be trailing worse.
In the statewide races where GOP primary electorates picked someone else besides Trump’s preferred choice, the alternative option is doing well in red states (Wyoming, South Carolina), not well in a blue state (Minnesota), and we’ll have to see about Iowa and Georgia.
ADDENDA: A periodic roundup of where else you can find me . . .
Most Tuesdays I appear on The Editors podcast. Today, I’ll be on the Friday one as well!
Most weekdays when I’m not traveling, you can find me co-hosting the Three Martini Lunch podcast with Greg Corombos — three martinis (topics) and a chaser, usually within 20 to 30 minutes.
My column in the Washington Post appears Tuesday mornings online, and in the print edition on Wednesdays. Now and then they ask me to contribute to roundups of columnists sharing different takes on a question.
Most Thursdays, when I remember I’m scheduled to appear, I join the Hugh Hewitt show for a segment or two.
I am on X and Instagram, and have fallen out of the habit of updating the work Facebook page.