By Terry Manning
I feel like Darline Graham deserved better.
The sister of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham was appointed to finish out his term after he died recently, a gesture that has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
What felt like a harmless tribute to a longtime reliably conservative voice took on a different tone when President Trump suggested she become the Republican nominee to fill the seat full-time. That would require her to win a special primary Aug. 11 against eight other announced candidates before facing Democratic nominee Dr. Annie Andrews in November.
GOP lawmakers in the state told CNN the Trump endorsement looked like a “backroom deal” and made the post look like “a family Senate seat being passed down.” The same article referenced comments on social media that tossed around terms such as “coronations” and “monarchies.”
Others tried to downplay the controversy, saying voters will ultimately decide who they want to serve, and that is true. It’s hard, though, to ignore the weight the president brings to bear when he wants to tilt the scales.
At some level, it echoes the discontent many Democrats felt when Vice President Kamala Harris was tabbed to face Donald Trump just a few months before the 2024 election. Years later, what some called Harris’ anointing is blamed for why she lost the election.
More accurately, it fits a pattern the president has followed for years with political appointments. In both his terms in office, Trump chose people who were grossly unqualified to fill high-ranking, powerful positions.
The man they call Don the Con behaved more like Don the Don, as in mob boss, making these future lackeys offers they couldn’t refuse. In many instances, the important positions quickly overwhelmed Trump’s picks, leading to bad outcomes for constituents and leaving the appointees to default to holding their posts by blindly following Trump’s dictates.
Given how disheartening it was to watch her brother protest and then kowtow to Trump, it would be just as disheartening to see Darline Graham put in a position where genuflecting to Trump would be expected from Day 1.
If you think I’m making too much of all this, that I’m making too much of a leap in how I think he’d view her, consider how Trump views giving and receiving favors.
As poorly as the conflict with Iran has gone since its start, Trump has played down the need for broader international support. When asked in May if he would seek help from China with the effort, Trump told the press pool aboard Air Force One, “I’m not asking for any favors because when you ask for favors, you have to do favors in return.”
Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade compares Trump to the fictional Don Vito Corleone in her book “The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government.”
She writes about Trump’s second term in office: “He has learned this time around that what he should prize instead of expertise and competence is loyalty – people who will do his bidding and sing his praises as he wishes.”
So the premise isn’t so far-fetched, is it? But while a senator Trump thinks is in his pocket could deliver wins for the state down the road — government contracts for large employers; easing regulatory oversight; staging large political events here — the flip side is what we are seeing from U.S. senators who have escaped Trump’s thrall.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn was about as solid a “Trump man” as you could think of. Axios states he voted for Trump policies “more than 99 percent of the time,” but Trump endorsed his opponent because the opponent sucked up to Trump just a little harder.
Trump endorsed scandal-ridden Ken Paxton over Cornyn because Paxton was “a true MAGA warrior,” according to The Texas Tribune. Cornyn’s sin? He criticized Trump after the Jan 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Now Cornyn is among the outgoing lawmakers who are holding the president’s feet to the fire on releasing the Epstein files and shutting down a proposed payout fund for the Jan 6 attackers.
For the record, Lindsey Graham also criticized Trump in the wake of that attempted insurrection, so who knows what the president has in mind, asking Graham’s sister to step into that post?
Darline Graham seems like a decent enough person, one who has dedicated her life to a different kind of public service than politics. She deserves better than to be a play toy for Trump and his desire to bolster his lineup of sycophants in Congress.
However long she is in the Senate, I hope she knows whatever she thinks she might owe him must come a distant second to what she owes the people of South Carolina.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate and worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.