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by WILL FOLKS
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Former two-term South Carolina governor, presidential candidate and two-time U.S. congressman Mark Sanford is entering the increasingly crowded race to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of the late Lindsey Graham.
Graham, incidentally, was the godfather of Sanford’s youngest son, Blake Sanford.
Sanford, 66, of Dale, S.C., is expected to file his paperwork with the S.C. State Election Commission (SCVotes) sometime Monday (July 27, 2026), but he kicked off his candidacy via a two-minute announcement video posted to YouTube on Thursday (July 23, 2026).
“Lindsey’s death is a reminder to all of us of how short and precious life is,” Sanford said in his clip. “My own dad got Lou Gehrig’s disease when I was in high school and this notion of all of us having just a little time has always hit me hard.”
“We’re stewards of our lives and the things that we love for just a short time,” Sanford added. “I’m now a dad, and a granddad, and I’m worried for our children because for the first time America’s borrowing from the future faster than we’re building it.”
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According to Sanford, the federal government is adding “about a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next 100 days.”
“If left unaddressed, that debt will crush our economy, it’ll wipe out our savings and it could even destroy our Republic,” Sanford warned. “Our ability to afford things – inflation, and the way people struggle to build a life are but symptoms of spending beyond our means as a country.”
That, according to Sanford, is his basis for running.
“I was ranked first in all of congress in efforts to protect your wallet or pocketbook,” Sanford said. “As governor, we held the line on spending as no governor before or since has ever done.”
Sanford and Graham entered the U.S. House together in 1995. Sanford stayed for three terms – making good on his self-imposed term limit pledge (one of the few politicians who has ever walked the walk on that issue). He was subsequently elected governor in 2002 and reelected in 2006 – and at one point was positioned as a top GOP prospect to run against Barack Obama for president in 2012.
Sanford’s promising career imploded, however, when he was caught traveling to South America to visit his mistress, María Belén Chapur. The dramatic events that imploded Sanford’s political career were recently revisited by CNN’s Jake Tapper as part of a new documentary series entitled United States of Scandal.
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Sanford rebounded from his fall from grace in the spring of 2013, winning a special election to the same first district seat he’d held prior to becoming governor. His resurgence was fueled by governor Nikki Haley’s decision to appoint then-congressman Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate – creating an opening in the first district.
In 2018, Sanford lost his bid for reelection to congress to then-state representative Katie Arrington.
He recently launched a campaign to reclaim his old seat in the U.S. House, but cut it short a month later.
Sanford’s most recent brush with fame was his 2019 affair with 33-year-old Olivia Nuzzi, a former New York magazine/ Vanity Fair reporter who covered his failed 2020 presidential bid. Exposed by Nuzzi’s former fiancé, Ryan Lizza, Nuzzi admitted to the relationship in her 2025 book, American Canto.
Announced candidates for Graham’s seat include his sister (interim U.S. senator Darline Graham Nordone of Pendleton), outgoing fifth district congressman Ralph Norman of Rock Hill, seventh district congressman Russell Fry of Surfside Beach, Upstate businessman Mark Lynch, attorney Duke Buckner of Walterboro and former Myrtle Beach mayor Mark Struthers McBride.
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Physicist Samuel Shepherd of Lexington and North Carolina-based land surveyor Clark Neilsen have also filed for the seat.
Early polling shows Norman and Nordone as the frontrunners to succeed Graham, with Sanford polling at around 5% of likely GOP voters. Broad swaths of the Palmetto State’s Republican electorate are undecided, though, according to the early surveys.
Filing for this seat will continue through next Tuesday (July 28, 2026) at 12:00 p.m. EDT as the GOP field continues to take shape. The special primary election will take place on August 11, 2026. If no candidate receives a majority of votes – which is exceedingly likely in such a crowded field – a head-to-head runoff between the top two vote-getters would be held on August 25, 2026.
The winner of the special GOP primary will face Democrat Annie Andrews, Libertarian Kasie Whitener, Constitution Party candidate Mark Hackett and several other independent candidates in the November 3, 2026 general election.
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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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