Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include additional context about super PACs, describe another option for Graham’s campaign committee and clarifies Gibbs Knotts’ title.
During three decades in Washington, Sen. Lindsey Graham built one of the Republican Party’s most formidable fundraising machines. His unexpected death not only creates a political vacuum in South Carolina – it also instantly freezes a multimillion-dollar campaign infrastructure and forces a rapid-fire special election that reopens the race overnight.
Graham died July 11 of a tear in his aorta. While most of the attention has been focused on who would fill out the rest of Graham’s fourth Senate term as well as replace him on the November ballot, there are also immediate questions about the fate of his campaign operation and the millions it raised. Those issues are intertwined because whoever wins the frantic scramble for the nomination faces a compressed fundraising sprint leading up to Nov. 3.
Since his previous Senate campaign, Graham raised $20.9 million – including $6.2 million since January 2025 – with $4.2 million in cash on hand through May 20, according to Federal Election Commission filings that preceded his June 9 primary victory. The main super PAC supporting him raised another $5.4 million through that date and last month announced it would launch a fall spending blitz leading up to the general election.
Now, though, the entire structure is in limbo. While Gov. Henry McMaster (R) appointed Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve the remainder of his term, state election law lays out a more complex process for replacing a deceased nominee on the ballot: a weeklong nomination process that begins on the second Tuesday after his death – July 21, in this case – and culminates in a special election Aug. 11, just two months after the primary.
That truncated timeline also shifts the financial stakes. Money still matters, but perhaps not in the same way it would during a traditional Senate cycle when candidates have time to cultivate donors and build a fundraising machine.
“I certainly think money’s going to be important,” Gibbs Knotts, a Coastal Carolina University provost and political science professor – and former political science department chair at the College of Charleston – where he currently serves as provost – told OpenSecrets. “But it’s not going to be of the magnitude, I don’t think, if this was a two-year sort of prospect to raise money and build a coalition.”
The challenge of copying Graham’s fundraising plan
Graham had been one of the Senate’s most formidable fundraisers: When he ran in 2020, he raised $104 million – at the time the highest total for a Senate incumbent, and the fourth-most among all Senate candidates running that year, according to OpenSecrets data. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) broke that record two years later by raising $180 million.
“He was obviously good at a lot of different parts of politics, but one of the things he was really good at was fundraising,” Knotts said.
The abrupt absence of a fundraising behemoth like Graham, Knotts said, is “definitely a big disruption” for the party’s machinery because he set a high bar that his successor – whoever it is – could struggle to reach.
“Eventually, they’re going to have to be able to figure out what Graham was doing and replicate that,” Knotts said.
Transfers from other committees made up nearly 55% ($3.4 million) of Graham’s total receipts in 2025-26. Most of that – nearly $3.1 million spread across 10 transfers – originated from his joint fundraising committee, the Graham Majority Fund. It raised $4.9 million through May 20, fueled by more than $600,000 in pass-through contributions from WinRed PAC and nearly $200,000 from the Republican Jewish Coalition PAC – underscoring Graham’s staunch support of Israel. The JFC also was a primary backer for his leadership PAC, transferring $250,000 to Fund for America’s Future, which raised $578,000 before the primary and banked $62,000.
What happens to all that money now?
Under FEC rules, the responsibility for the campaign’s funds falls to the committee treasurer, Cabell Hobbs. OpenSecrets reached out to Hobbs but did not immediately receive a response.
The rules governing that money are the same whether a candidate dies or drops out – which happened last week when Democratic nominee Graham Platner exited the Maine Senate race under mounting pressure. Graham’s campaign has several options, FEC spokesperson Myles Martin said. It could donate the funds to other state or local candidates subject to state law, transfer them to a party committee, spend them on other costs associated with winding down the campaign, donate them to charity or use them for “any other lawful purpose.” It also could convert the campaign committee to a PAC and make the customary expenditures associated with that type of entity.
They cannot be converted for personal use. And should the campaign choose to donate money directly to Graham’s successor as the nominee – or any other federal candidate – that contribution would be capped at $2,000 per election, Martin said. However, in a potential workaround enabled by a recent Supreme Court ruling, if the campaign instead sends those funds to other GOP entities, the party could directly coordinate its spending with the new nominee.
Also unclear is the fate of the Security is Strength PAC, the super PAC that through May 20 reported spending $3.9 million across 62 independent expenditures this cycle either to support Graham or to oppose his primary and general election opponents. Of course, as an independent expenditure-only group, it may continue to spend its money however it wants – so the key question it faces centers on what it will do with its remaining pile of cash. With $1.2 million banked, its roster of contributors reads like a who’s who of GOP donors: $1 million from both Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s revocable trust and casino magnate Miriam Adelson; $500,000 from hedge fund executive Paul Singer; and $250,000 each from Laura Perlmutter, the wife of former Marvel CEO and Trump associate Isaac Perlmutter; and Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder, who attended Wharton with Trump.
Three days after Graham captured the nomination, the super PAC – which had already spent $120,000 to oppose Democratic challenger Annie Andrews – said it reserved $8.5 million for television and digital ads to be deployed around Labor Day in concert with the college football season kickoff, noting a “strong affinity for college football and sports” among South Carolinians. OpenSecrets reached out to treasurer Kevin Hall but did not immediately receive a response.
Former candidates for governor eye Senate seat
Graham’s death left several conservatives jockeying for position for the suddenly open Senate seat – a prize not won by a Democrat in the state in nearly three decades.
Mark Lynch, who finished a distant second to Graham in the primary, told WCIV-TV in Charleston that he plans to run. He reported $5.9 million in receipts before the primary, including $5.1 million in campaign loans from 2025, and a $1.3 million war chest.
Three candidates who lost the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary to succeed second-term Gov. Henry McMaster – Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, Rep. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman – could be eyeing the opening. Mace – who unsuccessfully challenged Graham in 2014 – shared an X post roughly 12 hours after Graham’s death widely interpreted as a veiled reference to the vacancy.
Each of the three raised significant sums before the statewide primary election, according to their latest quarterly filings through June 30. The Trump-endorsed Evette raised nearly $6.2 million and had $171,000 in cash. Mace brought in nearly $2.7 million and held $213,000 in cash. Norman raised $7.5 million – including roughly $5.7 million from a personal loan – and ended with a $37,000 balance.
But they can’t put that cash toward a run for the vacant seat because under the FEC’s state-to-federal fundraising rules, any money raised in state races is off limits in a federal race.
Mace’s 2014 Senate campaign committee remains active. Her House campaign reported $450,000 in receipts through May 20 with $185,000 banked, but it has not raised a penny since September 2025 – roughly a month after she launched her gubernatorial bid. More than $260,000 of those receipts came from transfers from her JFC. Should Mace run for Senate, FEC rules allow her to transfer her House campaign funds to her Senate committee once she settles her outstanding $100 debt.
“You put a little bit of an advantage to somebody who has an existing account or somebody who is independently wealthy and can self-finance,” Knotts said.
The winner of the special election will face Andrews, a pediatrician bidding to become the first South Carolina Democrat to win a Senate race since Fritz Hollings in 1998. She raised $8 million before the primary – including $4.9 million in unitemized, small-dollar contributions of less than $200 – and banked $2.9 million, FEC records show.
But even amid the flurry to replace Graham, the fundamentals of South Carolina politics remain intact, with clear structural advantages belonging to Republicans.
“My expectation is that a South Carolina Republican, in this day and age, in this post-Trump era, is going to probably be pretty smart and figure out a way not to put themselves in a position where they’re going to set themselves up for a primary challenge,” Knotts said. “This state has not become a purple state or a competitive state in the same way that our neighbors Georgia and North Carolina have.”
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