COLUMBIA, S.C. — Rep. Russell Fry announced Friday he is backing Darline Graham in the South Carolina Republican Senate runoff, throwing his support to a former rival days after finishing third in Tuesday's special primary. The endorsement came at the urging of President Trump.
Fry and Darline Graham both competed to fill the seat held for decades by her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham. With Fry out of the running, his support gives Darline Graham a meaningful consolidation of the primary field heading into the two-week sprint to the Aug. 25 runoff.
Her opponent is Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican who serves as vice chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, the chamber's most conservative bloc. Norman's base in the Freedom Caucus gives him a defined lane with the party's right flank.
The race is set in a solidly Republican state, meaning the runoff winner is all but certain to hold the seat in the general election. The contest is effectively a fight over which wing of the South Carolina GOP controls one of the state's two Senate seats.
Trump's intervention on Darline Graham's behalf is the most direct factor reshaping the race. His pressure on Fry to endorse rather than stay neutral—or back Norman—shows how the president is managing Senate succession in a state he carries easily, using his political weight to steer outcomes within his own party.
Norman and Darline Graham are now racing to collect endorsements from power brokers across South Carolina before the Aug. 25 vote. Fry's backing is the first notable consolidation of the non-Norman primary field around Graham.
