Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the most prominent Republicans in Washington for a generation, died on July 11 at 71. The cause was an aortic dissection, according to the District of Columbia medical examiner, in a determination reported by ABC7.
The services
Two services are planned. One is at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, July 28. A second follows in South Carolina, in Columbia and in Pickens County, on Wednesday, July 29.
The succession, and why it is unusual
The more striking development is who now holds the seat.
Governor Henry McMaster appointed Graham's sister, Darline Graham, to fill the vacancy, and she has been sworn in. She has said she will run in the special Republican primary set for August 11 to seek the nomination for a full term, with a general election on November 3.
Darline Graham is not a career politician in the mold of her brother. She has spent roughly three decades in public service, and since 2019 has served as a commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind. Her appointment places a family member in a seat one of the Senate's longest-tenured members held, an arrangement that is legal and squarely within a governor's power, and also unusual enough to draw attention.
The Herald is reporting the appointment and the primary as facts. How the August contest unfolds, and whether other Republicans challenge her, is not yet established.
The senator he was
An assessment of Lindsey Graham's long career belongs in a fuller obituary than a fast-moving news account allows, and we will not attempt to compress it here.
What can be said plainly is that he was a central figure in American foreign policy and judicial politics for decades, a close ally of the late John McCain who later realigned toward the current Republican leadership, and a reliable presence on the Sunday programs. He was admired and opposed with equal intensity, often for the same votes. A serious account of that record will come, and it should be measured rather than rushed.
Why it runs on an LA front page
This is South Carolina's loss and Washington's story, not Los Angeles's. It runs here because the death of a sitting United States senator, and the immediate appointment of his sibling to the seat, is national news of the first order, the kind a serious city paper carries regardless of geography.
There is no forced local angle, and the Herald will not invent one. The verified facts are these: a long-serving senator has died, his sister has been appointed and sworn in to replace him, the state will hold a primary on August 11, and the country will mark his passing at two services at the end of this month.
