Conservative pundit George Will has pleaded for South Carolinian Republicans to mutiny and vote blue over President Donald Trump’s “cringeworthy” nepo sister pick for U.S. Senate.
Will, 85, wrote a column in The Washington Post Wednesday morning expressing his backing for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Annie Andrews over the Trump-endorsed sister of the late Lindsey Graham, Darline Graham.
The longtime Post columnist began by emphasizing the state’s tradition of political independence and the people’s “ample self-regard.”
“In 1860, this was the first state to vote for secession. The Civil War’s first shots were fired here,” he explained. “This year, South Carolinians can demonstrate political independence by electing Democrat Annie Andrews.”
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist praised Andrews, highlighting her political experience and her medical career as a pediatrician.
Will, however, made his disapproval of Graham clear, slamming the sitting junior senator’s “cringeworthy” debate performance last month in which she admitted she was “not that informed on national security.”
The conservative columnist described Graham, 62, as “oblivious” and said she would not be “senatorial” in the eyes of the Framers.
“She expresses unshakable faith in Trump’s Iran war, his tariffs and everything else: ‘I will have President Trump’s back 100 percent,’” he wrote. “So, of course Graham wants all illegal immigrants deported ‘immediately.’”
Will said that her stance would affect her state quite harmfully, noting that 6 percent of South Carolina’s population are immigrants who contribute $3.5 billion in state taxes.
“South Carolina is as red as the cheeks of a blushing Senate candidate should be when the candidate promises to serve passively as an enabler of presidential whims,” he jabbed.
He then turned his attention to Trump himself, saying that by endorsing Graham, he is “proclaiming that he can do whatever he wants” and he “expresses a disdain” for both the Senate and South Carolina.
“Today’s president, like many of his predecessors, but more than any, aggrandizes his power by maximizing the abject subordination of his entire party,” Will said. “It is perhaps too much to hope that today’s South Carolina might spurn a Senate candidate too servile to secede from Donald Trump’s domination.”
“Still, come November, hope for evidence that South Carolina, which historically has been so truculent about its independence, has actually exercised it,” he concluded.
Will, formerly a lifelong Republican, became an independent in 2016 over his scorn for Trump—voting for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024.
The writer, whom the Wall Street Journal dubbed “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America” in 1986, was a close ally of Ronald Reagan during his 1980 political campaign. He later became a prominent critic of some of the GOP’s most divisive figures, such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.
In Graham, Trump has placed all his faith in a political rookie whose primary virtue is name recognition. Her appointment by the state’s governor at Trump’s behest following her brother’s death this summer catapulted her into a spotlight she doesn’t appear acclimated to.
