Graham’s sudden death has triggered a temporary Senate appointment and a monthlong Republican nomination fight, with President Trump’s endorsement looming over both.

Lindsey Graham was 71, in the middle of a reelection campaign nobody thought he’d lose, when he died Saturday night at his home in Washington. His office called it a brief and sudden illness. Paramedics who responded that evening treated him for cardiac arrest, and a medical examiner later pinned the cause of death on an aortic dissection, CBS News reported. By Sunday morning, South Carolina Republicans were facing two problems at once: who fills the seat in Washington right now, and who runs for it in November.

Graham had already won his primary back in June, so the party can’t just huddle up and pick a new nominee. State law spells out a special primary, on a calendar tight enough to get someone certified before the general election. Gov. Henry McMaster has a separate job, naming a temporary senator to hold the seat until voters settle the question themselves. Nothing says his pick has to be the same person who ends up on the ballot in November, though it’s allowed to be.

How the process works

McMaster’s authority comes from Section 7-19-20 of the state code, which lets him appoint someone to serve until Jan. 3, 2027, when South Carolina’s next elected senator would be sworn in. As of Sunday, his office wasn’t tipping its hand. A spokesperson told CNBC the governor’s focus right now is on honoring Graham, and that word on the appointment would come later.

A different law governs the ballot question. Because Graham had already secured the GOP nomination in a primary, Section 7-11-55 kicks in, and it runs on a fixed clock. Filing opens July 21, the second Tuesday after his death, and closes a week later on July 28. The special Republican primary follows Aug. 11. If nobody clears 50 percent, the top two go to a runoff Aug. 25. CBS News, The New York Times and the South Carolina outlet FITSNews have all independently confirmed that timeline, though the state Election Commission hadn’t issued a formal calendar as of this writing. Whoever wins goes on the Nov. 3 ballot.

One wrinkle: state law doesn’t stop McMaster’s temporary pick from also running in the special primary. Anyone who lands that appointment would start the race with a title and a little extra name recognition, even though the job itself expires in January.

Candidate profiles

Ralph Norman

Ralph Norman represents the 5th Congressional District, a swath of the Upstate anchored around Rock Hill, and has spent his time in Congress as one of the House Freedom Caucus’s most reliable votes for spending cuts. He ran for governor last month and finished third, pulling in roughly 17 percent before throwing his support behind runoff winner Alan Wilson.

He’s said to be seriously eyeing the Senate seat now. Fox News Digital and FITSNews both reported that people close to Norman expect him to announce his decision Tuesday, July 14, though as of Sunday he hadn’t filed anything or said so publicly. When CNN asked him directly, all he offered was, “I don’t know.” He told the network he hadn’t had time to think past the shock of losing Graham. Whatever he decides, people who know his plans say he’s ready to spend real money of his own to make it happen.

Norman’s fiscal-hawk streak has occasionally put him sideways with GOP leadership and the White House, CNN noted, even though he’s built a career defending Trump on nearly everything else.

Nancy Mace

Mace has held the Charleston-based 1st District since 2021, the first Republican woman South Carolina ever sent to Congress. Her run for governor this year ended badly. She finished fifth, at around 12 percent, and lost even her own home county. She isn’t running for her House seat again either way.

Asked about the Senate seat, she told CBS News she “would be remiss if I didn’t at least consider” it, and a person familiar with her thinking told NOTUS she’s planning to start polling Monday. Between her national profile, real fundraising chops and money left over from three House campaigns, she wouldn’t be starting from zero, Newsweek reported.

What she doesn’t have is a stable relationship with Trump. She backed him hard early on, broke with him after Jan. 6, patched things up, and then watched him decline to endorse her for governor this year, something she’s blamed for her loss. She and Evette, Trump’s actual pick in that race, spent weeks trading shots.

After Graham’s death, Mace posted on X “”Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in…””

Pamela Evette

Evette has been lieutenant governor since 2019 and is about as close to McMaster politically as anyone in the state. She led the first round of the governor’s primary with Trump behind her, taking 29.3 percent, then got blown out in the June 23 runoff, losing to Attorney General Alan Wilson by more than 37 points after Trump backed him too.

According to NOTUS, two people familiar with the matter say Evette met with McMaster on Sunday to talk through the Senate vacancy and is weighing both the interim appointment and a run for the full six-year term. Her gubernatorial campaign’s fundraising and volunteer network would likely still be there for her to use, the Washington Examiner reported. The hard part is timing. She just lost a statewide race decisively, and the fact that Trump backed both her and her rival at different points doesn’t inspire much confidence that his support would be firm the second time around.

Mark Lynch

Lynch already ran once, challenging Graham from the right in June and accusing him of going soft on Trump. He lost, taking a share of the vote against Graham’s 56.8 percent, but he didn’t lose small, and he built a real operation doing it. FEC filings show his campaign raised close to $5.9 million, most of it his own, after he pledged to put $4 million to $5 million of his own money in.

He’s told outlets, including the Washington Examiner, that he’s interested in running again. A Greenville appliance-store owner by trade, his support runs through conservative religious and gun-rights circles in the Upstate. He also founded a group called the United Patriots Alliance, which has drawn scrutiny over its ties to hard-line organizations, and his last campaign took incoming over old comments about drug policy that he says were twisted out of context.

Others in the mix

Rep. Joe Wilson, the longest-serving Republican in the delegation, had reportedly been interested in the interim appointment, Punchbowl News reported. That changed Sunday, when he posted that he’d talked with Trump and planned to stay in the House to help protect the party’s thin majority there, a move CNN and NOTUS both read as him bowing out of both races.

Rep. William Timmons, of the Upstate’s 4th District, wouldn’t rule anything out when CNBC asked, but he hasn’t taken a single public step toward actually running. McMaster could, in theory, appoint himself, which would hand the governor’s office to Evette for his last few months in charge, FITSNews reported, though nothing suggests that’s where his head is. A couple of longer-shot names have floated around for the interim seat, too: Ed McMullen, Trump’s former ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, per NOTUS, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a South Carolina native fielding calls from people encouraging him to jump in, according to Politico. Former Gov. Nikki Haley’s spokesperson told Bloomberg she isn’t interested, and Newsweek reported that some political scientists have mentioned Rep. Russell Fry as a younger, Trump-aligned name to watch.

What could decide the race

If the governor’s race is any guide, Trump’s endorsement will carry more weight than anything else. Evette led the first round with his backing, then got crushed in the runoff once he also endorsed Wilson. Trump told NBC News on Sunday he already has someone in mind for the Senate seat, but said it was too soon to name names out of respect for Graham.

McMaster’s appointment could matter almost as much, working as a kind of soft endorsement even if the appointee and the eventual nominee aren’t the same person. So could money and organization, given how little time separates filing from the primary. Lynch and Evette both walk in with infrastructure already standing. Norman and Mace would have to build theirs fast, leaning on leftover cash and whatever name recognition survived their statewide losses. Geography plays a role too, with Norman and Lynch drawing from the Upstate, Mace from Charleston, and Evette from a statewide network built over two terms as lieutenant governor. Given how many names are floating around, a runoff on Aug. 25 looks like a decent bet.

General-election context

Whoever wins the Republican primary will face Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who won her own primary in June with 61.5 percent of the vote and has already raised more than $8 million, with close to $3 million still in the bank as of the end of May, per FEC filings. South Carolina hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1998, and the Cook Political Report still calls the race Solid Republican, putting the state at R+8 in its most recent partisan index. Inside Elections rates it Likely Republican.

Still, Graham’s death changes the math. He was running with two decades of incumbency, deep fundraising ties and a level of name recognition no first-time nominee will have in November. Some polling taken before he died had Andrews within single digits of him, though most of it came from pollsters tied to Democratic groups and hasn’t been backed up independently. Republicans remain the heavy favorites in a state Trump carried by roughly 18 points in 2024. But a rushed, potentially bruising primary followed by a scramble to introduce a brand-new nominee statewide gives Democrats an opening that didn’t exist a week ago.

What’s next

A lot of this is still up in the air. Norman is supposed to say Tuesday whether he’s running. Mace hasn’t decided. Evette is weighing both the interim seat and the special election. McMaster hasn’t named his pick, and Trump hasn’t said who he wants. Filing doesn’t even open until July 21. Until some of that shakes loose, South Carolina Republicans are stuck waiting to see how a race nobody expected has turned into one of the most consequential contests on this year’s ballot.