The Senate campaign landscape got a morbid shakeup with the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). First elected to the Senate in 2002 after eight years as a House member, Graham died July 11 after a “brief and sudden illness,” per his Senate office.
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A longtime foreign policy hawk and ally of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, Graham underwent one of the biggest transformations of any modern political figure. Graham ran against President Donald Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and their fight was acrimonious. After coming up woefully short in the GOP primary season, Graham was for months a virulent critic of the future president. But once Trump was in office for his first nonconsecutive term, Graham became one of his most loyal allies. That alliance only intensified once Trump returned to office.
Now the Trump administration is without a “Senate whisperer” of sorts to guide its legislative agenda on Capitol Hill through perilously small congressional majorities. Graham, who was 71, is among 303 senators who have died in office, per the Senate Historical Office. Including Graham, seven incumbent senators have died over the past 20 years.
Graham was on the Nov. 3 midterm ballot in his bid for another six-year Senate term. Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) appointed the late senator’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, as a temporary replacement to fill the vacant seat until Jan. 3, 2027. A special primary will be held Aug. 11 to choose a new Republican nominee, with an Aug. 25 runoff if no candidate wins at least 50% in the first round of voting. The GOP nominee will then face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews in the general election, for a full, six-year Senate term.
The eventual replacement for Graham as the GOP Senate nominee would be favored over Andrews, since South Carolina is a fairly deep-red state. No Democrat has won a Senate race there since the late Ernest “Fritz” Hollings in 1998, at the tail end of his 38-year career in the chamber.
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Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) is fortunate to have a day job to fall back on after losing the June 26 Colorado Democratic gubernatorial primary to state Attorney General Phil Weiser.
Usually, senators who jump into races for their states’ governorships are highly likely to win. That was the case in the 2026 cycle with a trio of senators who are gubernatorial candidates: Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
Yet “Michael Bennet is the first sitting U.S. Senator to lose a primary for governor in an open seat race in the post-World War II era,” noted New York-based Democratic pollster Adam Carlson in a widely viewed June 30 X post.
News interviews with Democratic primary voters and focus groups showed Weiser beat Bennet, long the favorite for his party’s gubernatorial nomination in the blue state, due to a tougher stance on fighting the Trump administration in the president’s second term. It’s part of a growing 2026 anti-Washington trend that’s already seen an abnormally high number of incumbent senators and House members come up short when seeking other offices.
To date, ten House members have lost bids for the Senate, governor, or state attorney general. That includes some of the House’s most recognizable characters, like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who lost the Texas Democratic Senate primary bid to state Rep. James Talarico. Crockett’s national profile grew amid a string of incendiary social media posts and a May 2024 House Oversight Committee meeting tussle with then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a GOP congresswoman for five years who has since left the MAGA fold.
Greene, during the committee meeting, blasted Crockett over the look of her eyelashes. Which prompted Crockett’s retort that her House colleague had a “bleach-blonde, bad-built butch body.” The spat that went viral on social media.
To be sure, some House members are finding success in statewide bids. Six have so far. For instance, Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) is his party’s nominee. He’s virtually assured of winning an open Senate seat in deep-red Oklahoma. It’s a similar situation in Alabama, where Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) won the all-important GOP nomination.
Another 11 House members trying to move up the political ladder are awaiting voters’ decisions in a string of late-season primary contests.
