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by WILL FOLKS
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Former two-term South Carolina governor and two-time U.S. congressman Mark Sanford issued a rare endorsement this week – lending his support to congressman Ralph Norman in his special GOP runoff race for the U.S. Senate against interim senator Darline Graham Nordone.
Sanford – who finished in fourth place in the special GOP primary for this seat last week – said he was supporting Norman because he was “freaked out” over America’s national debt recently eclipsing the $40 trillion mark.
“With very few exceptions I have refrained from seeking or giving political endorsements because I have long believed the sacred decision of a vote is best left between a candidate and the voter,” Sanford noted in a social post released on Friday afternoon (August 21, 2026). “But in some cases the contrasts are so strong as to warrant exceptions to a self-prescribed rule, and as I have watched this race for the U.S. Senate unfold over the last week, I am compelled to offer my perspective.”
According to Sanford, he’s supporting Norman because “I have seen first hand his experience in legislative circles, matched by a conservative voting record and conservative stands.”
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“This brings me to a binary choice, not only on the bigger question of less government and more freedom, but on who do I believe holds the best shot at holding the line on government spending, our debt and its accompanying deficits?” Sanford added.
Sanford said the escalating debt – and soaring interest payments on it – have “heinous implications for all of us.”
“And so as much as I would like to honor tradition and old friendships, the stakes are simply too high as our nation really is at a financial tipping point,” Sanford noted. “It’s for these reasons and more that I will be voting for Ralph on Tuesday and respectfully ask that you do the same.”
Sanford received 50,136 votes (or 14.94% of all ballots cast) during the first round of voting for this seat. His campaign was focused almost exclusively on the soaring debt and its escalating impacts on citizens and taxpayers.
“If left unaddressed, that debt will crush our economy, it’ll wipe out our savings and it could even destroy our Republic,” Sanford warned upon his entry into the race last month. “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.”
Norman welcomed Sanford’s support, saying he was “honored” to have his former rival’s backing in next week’s runoff election.
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“The Senate has become a place where good legislation goes to die, and as we elect our next U.S. senator, we NEED a PROVEN conservative to take up the mantle and fight!” Norman wrote on X.
Sanford wasn’t the only fiscal conservative to support Norman’s candidacy. State senator Lee Bright, one of only two senators to vote against the bloated 2026-2027 state budget, also lent his imprimatur to Norman’s campaign on Friday.
“I rarely tell people how to vote, because I have always believed voters should look at the candidates, look at their records, pray about it, and make their own decision,” Bright wrote on Facebook. “But there are times when the differences are too important to sit on the sidelines, and I believe this U.S. Senate race is one of those times.”
According to Bright, next week’s election “is about looking at the choices we have and asking who has the experience, who has a record, who understands the enormous responsibility of serving in the United States Senate, and who is most likely to stand against the continued growth of government and defend the freedoms we are leaving to the next generation.”
“For me, that choice is Ralph Norman,” he said.
FITSNews previously endorsed Norman, arguing he was “far better than the vast majority of ‘Republicans’ in Washington, D.C. – especially on the bread-and-butter tax and spending issues central to the survival of our nation.”
Norman and Nordone face voters this coming Tuesday (August 25, 2026) with the winner of their head-to-head matchup advancing to face Democrat Annie Andrews, Libertarian Kasie Whitener, Constitution Party candidate Mark Hackett and several other independent candidates on November 3, 2026.
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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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1 comment
I wish there was a way that Norman could make a difference, but its probably too late. We are a declining superpower. Have been for the last 25 years. Somehow alot of us knew that a few weeks after 9/11…we would spend hundreds of billions, if not trillions on 20+ years of war – GWB himself said the GWAT would be “decades.” Then the Great Recession, caused mostly by gov’t forced liberal housing mortgage policies and dishonest brokers of said mortgagers, followed by TARP bailouts, followed by Obamacare and its trillions in subsidies to insurance companies and nothing to show for it in terms of cheaper healthcare (he & congressional Democrats increased the debt by more than all previous presidents combined), then Trump said “hold my beer” and then increased it more than any single four year term in history, followed by Biden, not to be outdone, who said “hold my Ensure” and immediately broke Trump’s record. And we, the American people, like sheep, just shrugged and watched it all happen, never voting out those who kept passing those insane onmibus bills year after year. Throughout all that time, we borrowed money to give away to foreign countries and NGOs. It’s too far gone now. The math on the compounding interest is brutally honest. All we can be thankful for is that after the federal gov’t financially collapses, South Carolina has been conservatively governed for many decades, and has very low debt, fully- funded reserves, and large budget surpluses that can be remitted back to the people. But there will be a period of unrest when the federal welfare state benefits dry up. We need to start getting those people on the dole prepared for it so they can get back into the job market on the frontside of the calamity, to lessen the shock that is surely coming.