Does Jaime Harrison really stand a chance against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina?

Conventional wisdom in the South Carolina race for U.S. Senate is clear: Lindsey Graham will win re-election to his fourth term despite a spirited challenge from a very well-funded Democrat, Jaime Harrison.

The logic is powerful. First, there is hardly a redder spot on the map than the Palmetto State. Since voting for Goldwater in 1964, it has backed the GOP candidate in every election except 1976 when it voted for Jimmy Carter, probably because of his accent. South Carolinians haven’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Fritz Hollings won re-election for his sixth term in 1998.

This year no one predicts that Donald Trump won’t carry South Carolina, which he won with almost 55% to Hillary Clinton’s 41% in 2016. And the word “coattails” seems grossly inadequate to describe the sycophantic tether with which South Carolina’s senior senator, 65, has attached himself to the president.

If conventional wisdom were always right, though, Donald Trump wouldn’t be president.

Could he pull it off?

Some disclosure. Since living in South Carolina the last 20 years, I admit to having voted for Lindsey Graham twice. I will not be voting for him this year. And since retiring after 40 years as a national journalist, I felt ethically liberated to donate some money to candidates and PACS. This year I have contributed to both Jaime Harrison and to The Lincoln Project, a group of Republican strategists hellbent on defeating Donald Trump in November, as well as some of his allies in the Senate, including Lindsey Graham.

So how could Jaime Harrison pull this off?

For starters, he has a positive personal story, and he tells it well. A 41-year-old African American raised by a single mother in Orangeburg, he won a high school election and caught the attention of Rep. James Clyburn, the powerful House Democrat who drove African American turnout to save Joe Biden’s candidacy in this spring’s primary. An ambitious mentee, Harrison won a scholarship to Yale, where he graduated in political science, then went on to Georgetown for his J.D.

Mostly because he’s running against Graham, raising money has proved a gusher for Harrison. In the most recent quarter he raised almost $14 million, an astonishing sum for such a small state, but one that easily can be matched or exceeded by Graham. Partly because of such outside funding, the bipartisan political handicapper Cook Report moved the race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” the equivalent of some dark clouds appearing far on the horizon a couple of hours before the picnic.

While South Carolina demographics aren’t trending blue, some signs of change are afoot even here. Charleston County voted twice for Barack Obama and also for Hillary Clinton, and growth in the Charleston suburbs fueled the election in 2016 of Democrat Joe Cunningham to the 1st District Congressional seat—the first Dem to win that heavily gerrymandered seat in 20 years.

I listened in this week to a Zoom call with some founders of the Lincoln Project, curious why these guys were even bothering with the Palmetto long shot. Steve Schmidt, now the feisty MSNBC never-Trumper, a Lincoln co-founder, and a bona fide former Republican who ran the McCain campaign in 2008, didn’t mince words about Graham.

“My gut and my intuition tell me we can get him. He is the most insincere person in the U.S. Senate, and his conduct has been abhorrent — watching him cuddle up to Trump after the things he’s said about his friend John McCain.”

Won’t bet the farm

So it’s personal. Thus far, the race has been mild by the standards of South Carolina. This is about to change. Whatever else happens in this race, Schmidt promises, on behalf of The Lincoln Project, “You can expect brutal ads in South Carolina to frame this race.”

No quality public polling exists to evaluate the race right now, although what there is shows Harrison running closer than expected. “There’s never going to be a poll that shows Harrison in front of Graham,” says Reed Galen, another Lincoln co-founder. “If it happens, it will happen at the end of a close race.”

For that to occur will require a tsunami not seen since the election of 1980, when Ronald Reagan crushed Jimmy Carter and, with the help of the Moral Majority, swept out of the Senate numerous powerful committee chairman thought to have been untouchable until election night. Names like Bayh, Talmadge, McGovern, Church, Eagleton, Culver.

To conjure such a turnover, you have to envision a wildly unstable presidential race, one featuring unpredictable forces astir in the land and at least one unconventional candidate who defies traditional political norms. So, “yes” is the answer. Jaime Harrison could beat Lindsey Graham. I’m just not betting the farm on it.

This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 12:19 PM.