The Lindsay Graham problem

Polls show Lindsay Graham has a tough re-election race.  

For some reason Republicans in South Carolina are not fully on board with him.

Lindsay Graham looked at me and asked if I were the one who had asked him a question at a meeting the night before. I said I was.

We were in a small conference room at the office of a law firm. About a dozen people attended the event, 6 of them office staff of the lawyers pulled in at the last minute to try to fill the room. At least there was someone there who seemed interested in what he had to say.  He noted that I was at a second event in 12 hours. I said I was in New Hampshire attending presidential campaign events. 

"So you're a political tourist," he said.

Lindsay Graham was easy to follow in New Hampshire in 2015 and 2016. He had lots of events and hardly anyone showed up. 

In South Carolina I attended events for Republican primary voters, a Tea Party convention, a Presidential Debate focus group televised by CNN, and a meeting of Charleston Republican activists. 

GOP activists seemed eager to tell me a big secret. I was circulating around the room, introducing myself as a "political tourist", mentioning Lindsay Graham. Three different times the activists--mostly married couples--leaned toward me to say, quietly, "Don't you know? Lindsay Graham is a faggot."

That was the word they used, each time. "Faggot." 

They lowered their voices, not out of unease at using an epithet. "Faggot" was simply their term, said casually, without apparent shame or awkwardness in using the word, only in Graham's behavior they suspected. They spoke quietly because they were letting me--the naive outsider from Oregon--know the open secret everyone in political circles in South Carolina knew. Each couple then went on to tell me that Graham wasn't all that popular, that they held their noses to vote for him. 

Republican focus group, Charleston, SC

Three couple do not constitute data. They are anecdotes. But they tell me an undercurrent in the air, a tasty rumor worth bringing up to circulate. 

Democrats think they have an opportunity. Grassroots donors have responded to daily emails asking for money to stop Lindsay Graham, and it has flooded Jamie Harrison's campaign with money. Democrats are motivated. Graham's switched from friend of McCain, skeptic of Trump, and opponent of late term appointments to the Supreme Court into a Trump cheerleader. He is the Senate Chair leading the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation. It seems so nakedly unprincipled. So hypocritical. Democrats see Lindsay Graham as a classic Trump enabler and sycophant.

South Carolina was America's historic center for Southern resistance to Northern culture and political power. John Calhoun, Southern thought leader and defender of slavery, was a South Carolina Senator. Auctions in Charleston served the slave market for the Upper South. Strom Thurmond represented South Carolina for 48 years, until his death in 2003. There is a deep race history in South Carolina and Party affiliation is largely color-coded, with Republicans being the party of Whites, Democrats being the Party of Blacks. Black voters are 28% of the electorate. A Democrat gets to 45% of the vote by combining the overwhelming majority of Black voters, plus some White liberals. They lose. It is a White majority state.

But it is complicated. Their governor was Nickie Haley, a Republican and a brown- skinned woman of Indian heritage. Their new Senator, there by appointment to fill a vacancy, is a Black conservative. It is culturally conservative, as well as being White. Lindsay Graham cannot just coast into re-election. 

Donald Trump is more popular in South Carolina than in the country as a whole, with a 50% approval rating and a net favorability of zero. Trump will win the state's electoral votes. Lindsay Graham runs behind him, with a net favorability of minus-8. Various recent polls reported in FiveThirtyEight indicate support among Republicans of 84%, 89%, and 76%. Graham is missing a critical piece of the Republican coalition. 

Will this tip the election to Democrat Jamie Harrison? Probably not. Graham is a White Republican. Democrats across the country willingly give Harrison money, reflecting their frustration with Graham having become a Trump toady. Republicans will almost certainly "come home" to Graham for the same reason Democrats dislike him: at bottom Graham will do what he needs to do to please Trump-supporting Republicans. 

Graham's real risk is in the Republican primary. There is something about Graham. I don't hear about it in the media. The subject is forbidden. But I got an earful one-to-one.