|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
by WILL FOLKS
***
U.S. president Donald Trump is staring down another potential humiliation in early-voting South Carolina, a state where he has struggled mightily to accomplish his political ends in recent months.
In May, Trump tried to strong-arm the Republican-controlled S.C. Senate into approving his preferred maps for the state’s congressional districts.
In June, Trump tried to convince South Carolina Republican primary voters to select charisma-challenged lieutenant governor Pamela Evette as their next chief executive.
That bombed, too.
***
In fact, the ham-fisted dispensing of his imprimatur was so poorly received by Palmetto GOP primary voters that Trump eventually had to hedge his bet and belatedly “co-endorse” the eventual landslide winner, attorney general Alan Wilson.
Last week, Trump announced he would be giving interim U.S. senator Darline Graham Nordone his “complete and total endorsement” should she enter a special primary election to replace her late brother, Lindsey Graham, on the November ballot.
On Monday, Nordone obliged.
Early reaction to Trump’s latest attempt to play queenmaker has been resoundingly negative – but the real danger to Nordone’s candidacy lies in whether she’s even eligible to file for the ballot.
Last month, the S.C. Republican Party (SCGOP) adopted a new rule which held that candidates seeking the party’s nod for any office must have cast ballots in two of the past three GOP primary elections.
Nordone voted in the 2026 GOP primary election, but did not vote in either its 2022 or 2024 primary elections. She did, however, cast a ballot in the 2024 GOP runoff in Lexington County – which her supporters have argued qualifies her for the ballot under the new SCGOP rule, which became effective on July 1, 2026.
The text of the rule makes no mention of runoffs, however – something Nordone detractors believe is disqualifying.
***
RELATED | DARLINE GRAHAM NORDONE WILL SEEK FULL TERM
***
On Monday (July 20, 2026), Dorchester County GOP chairman CJ Westfall issued a statement requesting a “formal review” of her qualifications for the ballot by the SCGOP executive committee.
“The rules appear to require consideration of a waiver before she can be certified,” Westfall wrote. “Accordingly, I have requested a formal review of her qualifications prior to the July 28 certification deadline and, if necessary, that the matter be presented to the State Executive Committee.”
“This request is not intended to hurt or harm Mrs. Nordone,” Westfall added. “She has endured more this week than most people experience in a lifetime, and our prayers remain with her and the entire Graham family. This is about one principle only: the rules adopted by the delegates of the South Carolina Republican Party should be applied consistently and fairly to every Republican candidate. Equal application of our rules protects both the integrity of our nomination process and the confidence Republican voters place in it.”
Westfall is correct.
While we believe Nordone’s 2024 runoff vote qualifies as participation in that year’s primary process – thus making her eligible to run for office under the new rule – the strict language of the party resolution said “primary.” And Nordone definitively did not vote in the 2024 GOP primary.
So there is a credible case to be made to keep her off the ballot…
Given Trump’s support for Nordone, though, SCGOP leaders are likely to extend a waiver to her in the event she is deemed ineligible under the new rule – although, as Westfall noted, such a favor has the potential to de-legitimize the new rule just weeks after it was put in place.
***
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.
***
SOUND OFF…
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
8 comments
The new GOP rule to close the party’s primary elections was a mistake. Governor McMaster was correct in his assessment that closed party primaries don’t serve the long term interests of the GOP. That’s especially true by limiting the field to candidates who“participated in two of the last three party primaries”. Such a retrospective rule is especially unfair to Nordone who should have every right to run for her late brother’s Senate seat. The GOPs shortsighted requirement will now potentially disqualify Senator Graham’s own sister who now has President Trump’s “full and unconditional endorsement”. This new GOP rule also leaves conservative independent voters homeless.
It doesn’t make any difference, every GQP candidate’s head is so far up Trump’s ass they are licking his tonsils.
The humiliation isn’t Trump’s, he wins no matter what. The humiliation is for all these candidates who have to play along with this demented delusional felon-in-chief and pretend things like high gas prices and grocery costs are not singlehandedly caused by Big Daddy.
A runoff is just an extra situational step in a primary. Voting in a runoff is by definition a vote in that process. My concern is that we really have no clue what her politics are, and that’s too much of a risk for a six- year term. How many of us have siblings with drastically different political views than ourselves? Being Graham’s sister, on its face means nothing, predicatively speaking.
Most knew what the late senators politics were and yet chose to send him back over and over. The voting public is truly stupid
Yeah fair point…I try not to say “stupid” though – it’s more just complacency coupled with the fact that SC voters know the power of long-term incumbency in the Senate, where seniority is everything. We were at a political power zenith in the Senate in the late 1990s/early 2000s with Hollingsworth on the “D” side and Thurmond on the “R” side. It’s one of the main reasons we didn’t really lose any of our military bases when many dozens of them were getting closed – in fact they were being enlarged to absorb the people and operations from the closed bases.
Respectfully, it’s “Hollings,” not “Hollingsworth,” unless you added the “worth” for some sarcastic purpose I did not discern.
Otherwise, and not to be alarmist, from published reports, U.S. Senator Darline Graham Nordone must have entered her 60s and shares half her brother’s genes. Though her photos do not reveal excessive obesity, she could benefit from weight reduction, smoking cessation (if she is or was a smoker), abstinence (if she is or was a drinker), a heart health diet, and at least one echo of her heart and arteries and one CT-angiogram with calcium scoring, and whatever medical advice is given to her based on those tests.
The relative protection from heart disease women enjoy compared to men decrease or diminish after menaupose.
Other-otherwise, whatever the distant future holds for her politically, U.S. Senator Darline Graham Nordone can, God willing (and FITS permitting this comment of mine or an open letter to the newly-seated senator) accomplish much in the coming 6 months.
She needs to look at the federal recusal statutes for judges, which statutes set degrees of relationships according to antiquates parentellic inheritance laws, not according to modern medical genetics. I would happily explain to her, in terms a non-physician can understand, that current federal law ERRONEOUSLY sets a federal jurist’s first cousin as a fourth degree relative when biological first cousins share with the jurist the same percentage of genes that great grandchildren or great grandparents, who are classified as third degree, share with the jurist.
Modernizing that statute, and aligning it with GINA would be a much-needed, very feasible, bi-partisan issue which will bring more fairness to all federal courts, and would likely be emulated by state courts.
Another very feasible, medically useful issue, and likely to receive bi-partisan support, is requiring all prisons to provide female inmates who just delivered with facilities to breast-feed the baby or breast pumps with secure transportation of the mother’s milk to the baby outside the incarceration facility.
The babies committed no crimes and should not be punished by denial of mother’s milk. Breast is best.
Not to be alarmist, but from published reports, U.S. Senator Darline Graham Nordone must have entered her 60s and shares half her brother’s genes. Though her photos do not reveal excessive obesity, she could benefit from weight reduction, smoking cessation (if she is or was a smoker), abstinence (if she is or was a drinker), a heart health diet, and at least one echo of her heart and arteries and one CT-angiogram with calcium scoring, and whatever medical advice is given to her based on those tests.
The relative protection from heart disease women enjoy compared to men decrease or diminish after menaupose.
Otherwise, whatever the distant future holds for her politically, U.S. Senator Darline Graham Nordone can, God willing (and FITS permitting this comment of mine or an open letter to the newly-seated senator) accomplish much in the coming 6 months.
She needs to look at the federal recusal statutes for judges, which statutes set degrees of relationships according to antiquates parentellic inheritance laws, not according to modern medical genetics. I would happily explain to her, in terms a non-physician can understand, that current federal law ERRONEOUSLY sets a federal jurist’s first cousin as a fourth degree relative when biological first cousins share with the jurist the same percentage of genes that great grandchildren or great grandparents, who are classified as third degree, share with the jurist.
Modernizing that statute, and aligning it with GINA would be a much-needed, very feasible, bi-partisan issue which will bring more fairness to all federal courts, and would likely be emulated by state courts.
Another very feasible, medically useful issue, and likely to receive bi-partisan support, is requiring all prisons to provide female inmates who just delivered with facilities to breast-feed the baby or breast pumps with secure transportation of the mother’s milk to the baby outside the incarceration facility.
The babies committed no crimes and should not be punished by denial of mother’s milk. Breast is best.
“menopause,” not “menaupose”; and “antiquated,” not “antiquates.”
Faint hands and blurry eyes produce typos.