Lindsey Graham’s death leaves South Carolina confronting complex legacy: ‘You loved him and you hated him’

Lindsey Graham talks to reporters outside of the west wing of the White House on 28 February 2025 in Washington DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Lindsey Graham talks to reporters outside of the west wing of the White House on 28 February 2025 in Washington DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Lindsey Graham’s death leaves South Carolina confronting complex legacy: ‘You loved him and you hated him’ The US state mourns its longest-serving senator while Republicans scramble to choose a successor The South Carolina state house is a microcosm of the US’s contradictions. Outside there are memorials to the Confederate war dead and African American history. Below a statue of Strom Thurmond, a longtime US senator and racial segregationist, are the names of his five children including Essie Mae , whose mother, a Black maid, was 15 when Thurmond impregnated her. Thurmond died at the age of 100 in 2003; his successor, Lindsey Graham, a lifelong bachelor who never had children, died last Saturday at 71. His sudden exit leaves a void not just in Washington but the state that molded Graham, elected him to the Senate four times and wrestled with his shape-shifting journey from Ronald Reagan Republican to Donald Trump sycophant. ‘Mr President, you’re not far behind God’: Lindsey Graham in his own words Read more “I was shocked,” said Caleb Davis, 21, an air force enlistment candidate wandering in the state house grounds in Columbia on Tuesday. “He was our senator longer than I’ve been alive. He served us in the legacy of the great Strom Thurmond and whether I liked the man or his politics hasn’t got much to do with it. He was truly great and his shoes are gonna be some big ones to fill.” Republicans have only a month to organise a primary to find a candidate to replace Graham in November’s midterm elections. In the meantime, South Carolina is left to mourn a vivid character who reflected its own complexities. A conservative who championed bipartisan immigration reform; a foreign policy hawk who compromised his independence to stroke the ego of an isolationist president; a man without a “traditional” family who spent his life taking care of his sister; a globetrotting statesman who never lost the salty charm of a small-town pool hall. View image in fullscreen Lindsey Graham speaking to the media after his meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv on 10 July 2026. Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters Graham was alarger than life gift to political satirists who cast him as a fan-fluttering southern dandy from the pages of a Tennessee Williams play. It was an identity forged in a state described as “too small for a republic but too large for an insane asylum” when it became the first to secede from the Union in 1860. He was born to Millie and Florence James Graham of Central, South Carolina, in 1955. The couple owned a restaurant, bar and pool hall in the small town.