‘Dollars and cents’: Lindsey Graham amassed influence, not Wall Street wealth, over 3 decades in DC

As South Carolina’s senior senator, the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham amassed power and influence over three decades in Congress. But it appears he didn’t cash in on his access with stock trades.

Members of Congress can legally — and commonly do — own, buy, and sell individual stocks, a practice that is perennially scrutinized by ethics watchdogs over conflict-of-interest concerns.

An analysis by the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center found that 56 senators owned individual stocks as well as other investments in 2025, while 42 owned only widely held investments, such as mutual funds. In the U.S. House, the split was almost even: 202 and 201, respectively. (Six senators and one representative owned stocks through a qualified blind trust.)

Graham, who died unexpectedly over the weekend, was among the minority, according to the analysis and congressional financial disclosures.

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According to his latest filing, he invested in mutual funds and U.S. treasury securities. Graham’s assets were worth somewhere between $840,000 and $2.3 million in 2025 — after 23 years in the U.S. Senate and, before that, eight years in the U.S. House.

Federal law requires disclosures in broad ranges, making it impossible to determine an exact net worth.

Graham ended 2025 with personal savings ranging between $15,000 and $50,000 and a separate money market account ranging between $100,001 and $250,000. His two checking account balances totaled between $1,001 and $15,000, and $15,001 up to $50,000, according to his May filing.

Data firm Quiver Quantitative’s Congress Net Worth Tracker estimates Graham’s net worth at $1.48 million, based on his stock portfolio. That estimate ranks him 295th out of the 489 members 0f Congress on the firm’s list.

“He was never driven by money, ever,” Kevin Bishop, Graham’s longtime former spokesman, told the S.C. Daily Gazette on Tuesday. “It never factored into his thinking. As long as he had enough to go out to eat and play golf, he was happy.”

Graham’s only listed liability is a mortgage, held by Rocket Mortgage in Washington, D.C., incurred in 2012. The outstanding debt is between $100,001 and $250,000.

When he went to Washington in 1995, he bought a half share in a Capitol Hill townhome he co-owned with former Rep. Van Hilleary until the Tennessee Republican’s 2002 gubernatorial bid.

When Hilleary left, Graham bought out his share, Bishop said.

When home, Graham lived in the same, modest, three-bedroom home in Seneca that he purchased for $164,000 in 1993, according to Oconee County property records.

As a senator, Graham received an annual salary of $174,000.

“I always told people South Carolina was getting Lindsey Graham at a massive discount from the sheer dollars-and-cents perspective,” Bishop said.

Graham’s only real luxuries, according to Bishop, were his South Carolina-made BMW X5 and a few sets of golf clubs.

Whenever a South Carolina college wanted to give Graham a token of its appreciation, Bishop always recommended a tie.

“He’d wear it,” Bishop said. “The man didn’t own but a handful of ties, and he was always losing them traveling all around the world.”

At the same time, Graham was often at the center of national debates on foreign policy, national security and helped shaped the nation’s judiciary.

With a reputation as a war hawk, Graham advocated for a strong military and was a prominent supporter of U.S. involvement in Israel and Ukraine. He had just come back from a trip to Kyiv the day before he died.

Graham chaired the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2021 and led the Senate Budget Committee from 2025 until his death.

He also was on Senate appropriations and environmental and public works committees.

During his four terms in the House, he sat on committees related to international relations, education and national security. And he gained prominence as a member of the Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings of then-President Bill Clinton.

Graham also had the ear of President Donald Trump. Graham went from Trump critic amid during the 2016 presidential race, when the senator was briefly part of the GOP field, to one of Trump’s closest allies. The two frequently played golf together and Graham advised Trump on international matters.

For a man who “spent more than three decades around Washington’s most valuable information, Graham’s personal portfolio was remarkably ordinary,” financial publisher Matt Insley wrote Monday in The Rundown. “His path to Washington wasn’t.”

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The SC delegation

By contrast to Graham’s financial holdings, other members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation hold shares in a myriad of publicly traded companies, several with operations in the Palmetto State.

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott invested in numerous corporate stocks last year and reported income between $201 and $1,000 for his interests in AT&T. He did not report income above $201 for the rest of his corporate holdings, which include Google’s parent company Alphabet, American Airlines, Apple, Delta Air Lines, Proctor & Gamble, Target, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, Ford, Tesla, Amazon, Bridger Aerospace, and Boeing, which recently expanded its North Charleston assembly plant.

Scott reported assets and income from book sales worth between $1.7 million and $4.6 million.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s longest-serving congressman, reported between $15,001 to $50,000 in Dominion Energy shares last year.

The 6th District Democrat reported assets and pension income worth between $243,334 and $541,334.

And while 3rd District Rep. Sheri Biggs has yet to file her annual disclosure for 2025, the freshman’s first filing for 2024 reported common stock shares held by her husband in 38 different companies, including Verizon, UPS, Texas Instruments, Starbucks, Philip Morris, BP, Microsoft, Merck, Lowe’s, Johnson & Johnson, Berkshire Hathaway, and Apple. Investments with companies that have major South Carolina operations included Northrop Gruman, Norfolk Southern and Dominion Energy.

The couple also had depository receipts and shares with at least 70 other companies.

Biggs reported assets worth between $8.8 million and $14.2 million.

The five other members of the state’s congressional delegation did not list any individual stock holdings in their disclosures.

Rep. Ralph Norman, a wealthy Rock Hill developer before he entered Congress, remains South Carolina’s wealthiest congressman, with reported assets worth between $24.4 million and $90 million, according to his latest report. Norman, who lost his bid for governor in last month’s primary, is among Republicans planning to run in next month’s special GOP primary for U.S. Senate.

‘No Nancy Pelosi’

Probably among the most watched members of Congress when it comes to stock trading is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The California Democrat’s stock portfolio, which is run by her venture capitalist husband Paul Pelosi, has repeatedly outperformed the S&P 500.

Among trades that raised eyebrows were purchases of Nvidia stock in 2022 and 2023, just as Congress was debating hundreds of billion in subsidies included in the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act, meant to boost U.S. semiconductor production.

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Before that it was calls on Tesla before EV tax-credit expansions, and on Microsoft before large Azure cloud contracts.

The STOCK Act of 2012 was supposed to curb congressional insider trading by increasing reporting requirements, but critics say it hasn’t done enough.

In July 2025, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to advance the Halting Ownership and Non-Ethical Stock Transactions (HONEST) Act, a bipartisan bill that would ban lawmakers, the president, the vice president, and their spouses from holding, buying, or selling individual stocks.

Pelosi, who is not seeking re-election, even endorsed the bill.

On the House side, the Stop Insider Trading Act, introduced in January 2026, cleared the House Administration Committee, but both efforts have yet become law.

As for Graham, he reported a dozen investment transactions for 2025, with purchases and sales ranging between $15,000 and $250,000.

But Graham “was no Nancy Pelosi,” Insley wrote.