Lindsey Graham dies at 71 after long South Carolina Senate career

Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who spent more than two decades in Congress and repeatedly adapted to the shifting demands of his party, died Friday at 71 after a brief and unexpected illness, his office said.

Graham entered the U.S. Senate in 2003 after winning election in 2002, following earlier service in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995. He was re-elected to the Senate in 2008, 2014 and 2020, and in 2008 he became the first person in South Carolina history to win more than one million votes in a general election.

His political life in Washington was shaped as much by survival as by ideology. Graham was one of John McCain’s most prominent South Carolina allies, traveled with McCain on the campaign trail and worked with him in the bipartisan Gang of 14 effort to avoid a filibuster fight over judicial nominees. That long association with McCain later became part of the criticism Graham faced in South Carolina as Republican voters moved sharply toward Donald Trump.

The shift was most visible after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Graham said then that he had “enough is enough” and told colleagues, “count me out.” He later became one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate, a turn that underscored how far Republican lawmakers had to move to stay relevant in the Trump era.

That balancing act remained central to Graham’s career even as he faced intraparty criticism over his earlier moderation and his loyalty to McCain. In South Carolina, where Trump-backed politics reshaped the Republican base, Graham outlasted repeated tests of his standing and remained the state’s defining Senate figure for a generation.

He was running for re-election in 2026 and won the Republican primary on June 9 with 264,091 votes, or 56.8%, according to Associated Press results. Graham’s death closes a career that tracked the Republican Party’s own transformation, from the post-9/11 Senate of McCain and compromise fights to a harder, Trump-centered politics that rewarded loyalty and punished distance.