SC candidates for US Senate clash over diversity programs in final days of campaign sprint

WEST COLUMBIA — As candidates sprint to make their pitches to voters ahead of the special Senate election Tuesday, questions over what qualifies as diversity, equity and inclusion have emerged as a central issue.

Ten candidates are running to replace U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham as the Republican nominee on the November ballot following the longtime senator’s unexpected death last month.

Usually, candidates have months, sometimes years, to fundraise and make their cases to voters. For this election cycle, they had weeks.

Candidates include Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, who was sworn in days after his death to complete the term that ends in January. She’s running for a full term with President Donald Trump’s endorsement, which is coveted in a state that has voted overwhelmingly for Trump every time he’s run.

Graham, who has never run for public office, is up against candidates with much more political experience, including U.S. Reps. Ralph Norman and Russell Fry, as well as former Gov. Mark Sanford, who spent a cumulative dozen years in Congress.

Also on the ballot is Danny Ford II, son of Clemson’s first football national championship coach, who ran unsuccessfully for commissioner of agriculture earlier this year.

The state Republican Party initially decertified Ford for violating a new party rule that requires candidates vote in two of the last three GOP primaries. Ford sued, arguing the rule violated the state constitution.

After a Richland County judge ordered the State Election Commission to put Ford back on the ballot, the GOP party appealed to the state Supreme Court. The state’s highest court allowed Ford to stay on the ballot.

The decision was because of logistical confusion, since early voting had already begun, not because justices agreed with the lower court, the order emphasized. The case is expected to continue regardless of whether Ford makes it to the runoff.

Nearly 62,000 people cast their ballots during three days of early voting last week, and another 745 had voted absentee as of Monday, according to the State Election Commission.

Final jabs

Tensions ignited between Graham and Fry, who was widely expected to receive the president’s endorsement, in the final days of campaigning. Fry accused Graham of supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts during her time as executive director of the Commission for the Blind, which Graham said were actually programs meant to help blind people.

Fry’s campaign pointed to an annual report from 2020 that said the agency made changes in her first year leading the agency “to develop a culture of diversity and inclusion.” Last year’s report makes no mention of similar initiatives.

But Fry’s campaign used the issue to question whether Graham was actually as supportive of conservative priorities as she’s telling voters.

“Bless her heart — Darline Graham is playing political chameleon, changing her colors and pandering to whatever audience is in the room,” Fry’s campaign spokeswoman, Kayla Lott, said in a news release.

The commission was helping find blind people jobs, not hiring employees just because of their race, gender or sexuality, which is often the concern among opponents of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Graham said during a campaign stop Monday.

“We helped blind people find jobs, go to work, so that they didn’t have to rely on the government, saving taxpayer dollars,” Graham told about two dozen people at a Lizard’s Thicket. “How do you attack me for supporting transgender (people) for that?”

Fellow Republicans Trey Gowdy, a former Upstate congressman, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott jumped to Graham’s defense as well, sparking a GOP vs. GOP debate over what DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — actually means.

US Sen. Lindsey Graham remembered by his ‘beloved’ South Carolina: ‘He was us’

Gowdy and Scott, who were among speakers at her brother’s funeral, suggested helping people with disabilities enter the workforce doesn’t raise the same concerns as initiatives to balance race and gender in a university or company.

“If you are actually supporting blind folks in your job, I would not conflate that with DEI, personally,” Scott said on his Sunday Night in America show on Fox News.

Graham has also faced criticism for her lack of political experience.

The other frontrunners stress she’s unproven beyond the votes she’s taken in the last few weeks and bills she’s signed onto that her brother co-sponsored.

“I’ve got a record people can look up, no guessing needed,” Norman, a former legislator first elected to Congress in 2016, said in a statement. “I walk the walk.”

Norman, a member of the U.S. House’s hardline Freedom Caucus, has positioned his campaign as the most conservative in the field.

While taking a job at the Trump-endorsed candidate, Fry touts he’s the one who’s voted to pass legislation supporting Trump’s agenda.

“I didn’t inherit a record. I earned it,” Fry said during the state GOP debate last week. Like Norman, Fry is also a former state House representative. He was first elected to Congress in 2022 with Trump’s backing.

Graham said Monday her lack of previous political experience is a positive, saying “people want a fresh change.”

She led the Commission for the Blind, an agency with 110 direct employees, from September 2019 until her appointment last month.

“I bring experience to the table,” Graham said. “I’m just not a politician.”

Hilda Barnwell, a retired respiratory therapist who came to Graham’s stop at Lizard’s Thicket in West Columbia on Monday morning, said she sees the senator’s lack of political experience as a reason to support her.

“I think it’s time for a change, to maybe not send someone to Washington that’s a career politician,” Barnwell said.

The 78-year-old Columbia resident long supported Lindsey Graham, she said. He wrote her grandson a letter of support for West Point, the nation’s military academy, and they stayed in touch after that.

But Barnwell hopes his sister’s priorities might stick closer to home. Graham, who traveled the world extensively, had just returned from a visit to war-torn Ukraine when he died.

Darline Graham has said she would concentrate more on pocketbook issues. She used to urge her brother to talk more about “what matters to the average person,” such as the cost of healthcare, gas and groceries, she told Sean Hannity during a Fox News interview.

Her opponents have said the same. Asked during a debate last week how they’d chiefly differ from the late senator, all four Republicans on stage — Fry, Norman, Sanford and Upstate businessman Mark Lynch — said they’d focus more on spending and affordability here at home rather than foreign policy. Graham was in Washington during that debate.