Another South Carolina ‘Smack Down’ for Senator Lindsey Graham
There is less than one month to go before the June 10th primary and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has just received yet another censure from South Carolina Republicans.
According to Conservative Fifty:
“On Monday evening the Charleston County GOP, one of the largest and most active county GOP groups in South Carolina, passed a censure resolution against Graham by a vote of 39-32.
Charleston becomes the 9th county GOP to censure Graham since August. Other counties to censure Graham are Lexington, Pickens, Anderson, Laurens, Orangeburg, Greenville, Fairfield, and Chesterfield.
All of the 9 censure measures have cited similar points where conservatives claim that Graham has strayed from the GOP party platform, and or aligned himself with the democrat and leftist agendas. For some years, Graham has been the lightening rod of frustrations among conservative republicans who tend to align themselves more with DeMint and Cruz type republicans over Graham and McCain republicans.”
These censures (formal statements of disapproval) may very well have a powerful psychological effect on Graham heading into the June 10th primary. Also, as Conservative Fifty describes:
“Graham is facing a primary challenge from multiple challengers who together could siphon off enough of the vote to keep Graham under the 50% plus one vote threshold to win the primary without a runoff. All available polling in recent months has shown Graham well under 50%, though he has been bombarding the airwaves with TV and radio ads en masse during the recent weeks. However, no independent scientific polling has been released in recent weeks to show where Graham’s challengers line up against him.”
Graham’s multiple challengers include:
Bill Connor (a 23- year Airborne Ranger Infantry officer and Afghanistan combat veteran. Connor currently serves as a Lt. Colonel in the US Army reserves. He is an attorney and Law Partner for, LLC” who serves as the Chairman of the Board of Orangeburg Christian Academy. He also serves on the State Board of “Youth Challenge”).
Nancy Mace (the daughter of retired Army Brigadier General Emory Mace. Many know Nancy as the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. She is also the author of In the Company of Men: A Woman at The Citadel, which world-renowned author Pat Conroy described as “The best book about The Citadel ever written.”An accomplished businesswoman, Citadel graduate, a wife and mother—Mace resides in Charleston with her family).
Lee Bright (Bright is well-known as the most conservative member of the South Carolina State Senate. He is director of business development for BBD, LLC and operates a trucking brokerage business. In the 2013 session Sen. Bright is the lead sponsor of the Constitutional Carry bill (removing requirement of law-abiding citizens to obtain a permit to exercise Second Amendment rights), the Firearms Freedom Act (exempting firearms manufactured in state for sale in state from regulations), the Freedom of Choice Healthcare Act (“opt-out” of Obamacare).
Richard Cash (an Upstate businessman, a husband of 28 years, a father, a corporate computer analyst, a full time pro-life missionary, a volunteer youth coach and athletic director, and the founder and owner of two small businesses. Cash owns and manages a fleet of neighborhood ice cream trucks, as well as a pre-owned vehicle business).
Det Bowers (born in South Carolina, Bowers graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Government degree from Wofford College, received his Law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law and his Masters of Divinity from Columbia International University. He practiced law for nearly 20 years and was involved in real estate development, agribusiness, outdoor advertising and insurance. He has also invested the past 20 years in Christian ministry).
Jay Stamper (A resident of Columbia, South Carolina, Jay attended public, private and parochial schools and graduated from Connecticut College in 1995 with a degree in Government. Over the last decade, Stamper has founded a number of businesses, including The Delaware Company, an incorporation service that helped over 10,000 people in South Carolina and across the country start and grow their businesses).
June 10th will be an exciting day for South Carolinians as they head to the ballot box. Together, Graham’s challengers could pull him under the (50% plus one vote) threshold and thrust him into the runoff. If this is the case, one of these challengers will then face Graham (two weeks later) in the runoff.
However, according to Conservative Fifty, “Historically runoffs tend to not favor an incumbent because voters seem to view it as weakness if an incumbent cannot win outright.”
Perhaps, South Carolinians will be retiring Senator Lindsey Graham once and for all?
