Crossroads 2026: Andre Bauer To Challenge Lindsey Graham

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Former South Carolina lieutenant governor André Bauer will put an end to months of speculation and formally announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate against veteran incumbent Lindsey Graham this week, multiple sources familiar with the timing of Bauer’s announcement have confirmed to FITSNews.

Bauer, 56, originally of Charleston, S.C., had reportedly planned on announcing his entry into the race on Tuesday (July 1, 2025) during an interview on Fox News. Unfortunately, Graham backers are alleged to have used their influence with the network to block Bauer’s appearance.

Fox has been criticized by many in the America First movement for its aggressively neoconservative (a.k.a. warmongering) foreign policy – and its efforts to silence those who have refused to toe the company line.

“We’ve watched propaganda news for decades,” U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said recently. “I’ll call out Fox News and the New York Post. They’re known to be the neocon network news.”

FITSNews first reported on Bauer’s potential U.S. Senate bid back in January, noting he was “inclined to challenge Graham in the event he decides to reenter public life.” We followed up with a piece a little over a month ago noting Bauer had “set his sights” on the U.S. Senate race.

“Dré Day” is now here, multiple Bauer confidants have told us…

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First elected to the S.C. House of Representatives in his late twenties, Bauer quickly rose through the ranks of the newly minted “Republican” majority in Columbia, S.C. In March 1999, he won a special election to the S.C. Senate just eleven days after his 30th birthday and in January of 2003 he became the youngest lieutenant governor in the nation at the age of 33.

Upon leaving the lieutenant governor’s office in 2011, Bauer spent several years as a CNN analyst – and was nominated by president Donald Trump in July 2020 to be the U.S. ambassador to Belize. When Trump announced his 2024 reelection bid in South Carolina, Bauer was one of the first Palmetto State politicians to appear alongside him and endorse his candidacy.

Conventional wisdom holds that Trump – who endorsed Graham back in March – will not aggressively campaign against one of his key early supporters. Also, Graham is extremely unpopular with the conservative GOP base in the Palmetto State, meaning Trump sticks his neck out for the senior senator at his own peril.

In 2020, Graham – who has never faced a credible reelection challenge – received an underwhelming 67.6% of the GOP primary vote. While that number may sound impressive, it wasn’t.

“In a competitive race against a credible, well-funded rival such a number would have represented stirring victory,” I noted at the time.

But Graham wasn’t facing a credible, well-funded rival. Instead, he ran against “a trio of virtually unknown, practically penniless opponents.”

Prior to Bauer’s impending announcement, Graham’s top announced rival for 2026 was Mark Lynch – a Greer, S.C.-based appliance store owner. Lynch has leaked polls to the national media which show Graham getting the support of only 43% of Republican primary voters in a head-to-head election against what amounts to a generic GOP challenger.

Bauer’s entry into the 2026 race is not occurring in a vacuum. Just yesterday (June 30, 2025), our Dylan Nolan reported that Paul Dans – the former director the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – was also considering challenging Graham. Dans is reportedly jumping into the race with some considerable coin in his pocket, too.

Bauer’s impending announcement also comes as Graham’s campaign touted the hiring of top Trump strategist Chris LaCivita as a “senior advisor.”

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RELATED | PROJECT 2025 ARCHITECT MULLS U.S. SENATE BID

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“President Trump has made it clear that he wants Senator Graham by his side to keep delivering results and I’m proud to do my part to ensure that happens,” LaCivita said in a statement released by Graham’s campaign. “I’m excited to help reelect Senator Graham as he continues to bring the America First agenda home to South Carolina.”

As I noted last month, defeating Graham will not be easy… no matter who emerges as his top challenger.

“For starters, there’s his ready access to tens of millions of dollars from the military-industrial complex – a spigot which flow all the more freely in the event he finds himself in genuine political peril,” I wrote. “The sad truth is Graham’s neoconservative warmongering – which has frequently endangered our national security – has equipped him with unlimited ability to defend himself against attacks and aggressively attack his rivals.”

Both Bauer and Dans have vulnerabilities Graham can exploit, too.

There’s a flip side to that coin, though. With all the tens of millions of dollars Graham can raise, at some point a point of saturation is reached. As we saw in Graham’s successful 2020 general election against Democrat Jaime Harrison, eventually the return on investment becomes so diminished the effect of the massive fundraising advantage was negated. In other words, challengers don’t have to match Graham financially – or even come close to matching him – they just have to achieve something resembling parity.

And target their resources where they will have the maximum impact…

While there are many uncertainties ahead, one thing can no longer be denied: Graham – who has gotten a free ride in every GOP primary in which he has competed – is poised to face his first-ever credible Republican primary challenge. Will he survive it? GOP voters head to the polls next spring (June 9, 2026). In the event no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast, the top two finishers would face off in a runoff election two weeks later (June 23, 2026).

Keep it tuned to FITSNews as this race begins to take shape…

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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