The Confederate flag flew over the state Capitol here until just five years ago. No Democrat has been elected statewide for more than two decades. President Trump won the state by 14 percentage points in 2016.
But in conservative South Carolina, the most unlikely battleground in Republicans’ struggle to retain control of the Senate, Sen. Lindsey Graham is in the fight of his career. He’s counting on Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court — and the hearings he’ll preside over as Senate Judiciary Committee chair, starting Monday — to act as a political lifeline, uniting conservatives behind him.
Polls show the three-term GOP senator in a dead heat with his opponent, Jaime Harrison, who is reaping a windfall of contributions from donors across the country. In a sign of how nationalized the race has become, as of August, both candidates had raised more money in California than in their home state.
The battle pits one of President Trump’s most loyal allies against a young Black Democrat who, if he won, would make this racially polarized state the first to have two Black senators (the other is GOP Sen. Tim Scott).
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