Lindsey Graham, the garrulous son of South Carolina pool hall owners who rose to become a fixture on the global stage and one of the most prominent advocates of American military might in the U.S. Senate, died Saturday night after what his office called “a brief and sudden illness.” He was 71.
A former military lawyer who reached the rank of colonel in the Air Force, the wisecracking Graham was known for his Southern drawl, political flexibility and reliably hawkish stance on foreign policy. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 as a determined opponent of Donald Trump, then became one of the new president’s staunchest allies.
In his typical high-energy manner, Graham had just returned to Washington, D.C., from a trip to Ukraine, having announced a deal with the Trump administration for a new package of sanctions against Russia. He was due to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning to discuss it. Trump appeared in the senator’s place.
“I just can’t believe it,” Trump said. “He was like a member of the family.”
His death brought encomiums from world leaders and, closer to home, Republicans and Democrats alike, a mark of his influence and his ability to befriend colleagues of different political persuasions. In an outpouring of tributes, lawmakers expressed their shock and remembered his good humor, kindness and zest for the political arena.
“He is the quintessential boy makes good story,” said Bob McAlister, a communications consultant who long worked with Graham. “I don’t know of anybody who, or know very few people who, started out with less and gained as much from life as he did. I guess that may be my epitaph for him.”
Graham transformed from Trump critic to ally. He was part of the “Never Trump” movement during his 2016 run and feuded heatedly with his reality television star rival during the campaign. He was especially upset at Trump for “slandering” his close friend and political brother-in-arms, U.S> Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “You know, run for president, but don’t be the world’s biggest jackass,” Graham said.
In response, Trump announced Graham’s cellphone number during a campaign rally, leading Graham to muse about whether he should get an Android or iPhone to replace it.
By coming around to Trump, particularly in the years after McCain’s death in 2018, Graham amassed influence as an intermediary to the White House. Graham and Trump enjoyed a close relationship and became frequent golfing partners, though their relationship ruptured for a time after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Still, a year later, Graham was urging Republicans to rally behind Trump again rather than side with critics calling for his political exile.
“Can I just say to my Republican colleagues — can we move forward without President Trump?” Graham said on Fox News in 2022. “The answer is no,” he said, adding “we can’t grow without him.”
His journey from the pool hall to Congress
Graham was born to Millie and Florence James Graham of Central, South Carolina on July 19, 1955. The couple owned a restaurant, bar and pool hall in the town. Graham, his parents and younger sister all lived in one room in the back of the building.
“It was one room, where we all slept, we all ate, we watched TV, the sofa, everything was in one room,” his sister Darline recalled in 2015.
As a child, Graham had free reign of the Sanitary Cafe, where he occasionally would sneak a swig of beer or a puff on a customer’s cigarette, he wrote in an autobiography. The patrons, who would take him hunting and fishing as if he were their own son, called him “Stinkball.”
“It was a good life,” Graham recalled to The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina. “I could go grab a Coke any time I wanted to. In my world, I was as rich as I could be.”
Like many institutions at the time, the Sanitary Cafe was segregated, Graham wrote. Black patrons had to take their alcohol to drink outside the establishment until the 1970s. But Graham said his father, known to all as “Dude,” would not tolerate his white customers using slurs against Black people.
Only a C student in high school, Graham still became the first member of his family to attend college at the University of South Carolina. While he was at college, his mother died of Hodgkin lymphoma. Months later, his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died of a heart attack as Graham started his first semester of law school.
Graham, a lifelong bachelor who never had children, became the guardian for his younger sister after his parents’ death and later in life often extolled the benefits of Social Security that helped keep them financially afloat.
After earning his law degree, Graham served as a judge advocate general in the Air Force, starting as a defense attorney for accused troops and eventually rising to the Air Force’s chief prosecutor in Europe, based in Germany. He returned home in 1989 but remained a reserve or National Guard member for decades.
Even in the U.S. Senate, Graham briefly switched back to active status to help advise the Air Force during the Iraq War and was awarded the Bronze Star medal for service in 2014 before formally retiring as a colonel in 2015.
Upon returning to South Carolina, Graham soon dove into politics. He won a statehouse seat in 1992 and then a U.S. House seat in 1994. He became one of a group of young, combative Republican lawmakers who pushed to oust then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich for cutting too many deals with the Democratic president, Bill Clinton.
Graham took on a prominent role in Clinton’s impeachment for an affair with a White House intern. “Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?” Graham asked at one House hearing. After the GOP-controlled House impeached Clinton, Graham became one of the managers of the case in the Senate, which voted to acquit the Democrat.
In 2002, when Strom Thurmond, South Carolina’s senior senator, decided to retire at 99, Graham ran for his seat and won. He quickly took to the Senate and its emphasis on relationships, starting some mornings by eating alone in the stately Senate dining room, then throwing himself into the day’s bubbling political fights.
Vice President JD Vance recalled experiencing Graham’s approach to politics up close when Vance was first elected to the Senate.
“I remember getting into a shouting match with Lindsey about a Ukraine funding bill at lunch and then learning the very next day that he was pushing rail legislation I really cared about behind the scenes,” Vance said. “That was Lindsey Graham. He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted.”
Graham had a gang of ‘Three Amigos’ in the Senate
Much of Graham’s career was defined in large measure by his close relationship with McCain and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat who later became an independent. Calling themselves “The Three Amigos,” the senators traveled the world and pushed for U.S. intervention in several places, particularly the Middle East after the 9/11 attacks.
When McCain died in 2018, Graham broke down in tears on the Senate floor as he memorialized his friend.
“He failed a lot, but he never quit,” Graham said. “And the reason we’re talking about him today and the reason I’m crying is because he was successful in spite of his failures.”
In the latter part his career Graham leaned on his legal background to take a key role in judicial appointments, especially to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2018, when Trump’s nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced accusations of sexual misconduct, Graham helped turn the tide with an impassioned defense of the federal judge.
“Boy, y’all want power. Boy, I hope you never get it,” Graham said, accusing Democrats of setting up Kavanaugh and breaking trust in the nomination process. “I hope the American people can see through this sham.”
Still, Graham’s partisan side was usually tamped down as he positioned himself as a dealmaker. Almost any bipartisan “gang” in the Senate always has had him as a member.
“He was a fierce Republican partisan one day and a key bipartisan ally the next,” recalled Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who worked with him on immigration legislation.
Kevin Bishop, who worked for Graham for 27 years and later ran for Congress himself, said the senator inspired fierce loyalty in his staff.
“He was incredibly fun to be around,” Bishop said. People would walk into his office with “pitchforks” and Graham would turn them around, he said.
“He was willing to accept a lot of criticism to move the ball forward,” Bishop said.
