Morning Digest: Why Lindsey Graham may be worried about a primary upset

Despite becoming a MAGA lackey, the South Carolina Republican remains unloved by the base

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. (Credit: Lindsey Graham Facebook)

Leading Off

SC-Sen

Allies of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham have now spent over $10 million to help him fend off wealthy businessman Mark Lynch in next week’s Republican primary, while the well-funded incumbent has spent months attacking his opponent.

Graham and Lynch, though, may have to keep slugging it out for another two weeks, according to a new poll of this rarely surveyed contest.

The Citadel, the famed Charleston military academy that polls its home state twice a year, finds Graham leading Lynch 46-36, with the remaining 18% saying they’re undecided. Because candidates need to win a majority of the vote to avert a runoff, four minor Republicans on the ballot may get enough support to force a second round on June 23.

Almost three-quarters of respondents, though, predict the four-term incumbent will win his party’s nomination, and they have reason to be bullish about Graham’s prospects.

While the senator has long had a shaky relationship with his state’s conservative base—Graham won an unimpressive 56% of the vote in his 2014 primary—the most powerful voice in GOP politics remains in his corner.

Last year, Donald Trump endorsed Graham, a one-time presidential primary rival and friend of John McCain who long ago morphed into a MAGA lackey. Trump is also no fan of Lynch, whom he blasted on Truth Social in April as “a LUNATIC” who “would be a DISASTER for the Republican Party.”

Graham and his allies have likewise worked hard to disqualify Lynch. One Graham ad in April attacked the challenger for having suggested that “medical cocaine” should be legal, while a more recent spot highlights Lynch’s arrests on drug charges in the 1980s.

Lynch, who says he changed his life long ago, thinks Republicans should care about Graham’s far more recent political transgressions.

One Lynch ad utilizes footage from the 2016 presidential primary showing Trump calling Graham a “nutjob” and “one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen.”

Lynch, who has loaned his campaign $5 million, has also argued that Graham hasn’t abandoned his pre-Trump habit of occasionally voting across party lines.

Lynch fired off a social media post on Wednesday claiming Graham, along with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, are “the only 3 REPUBLICAN SENATORS that voted with Biden more than 50% of the time.” Lynch concluded, “We can dump one of these ladies on Tuesday June 9th!”

And while Lynch has received nowhere near as much outside support as the incumbent, one third-party group is hoping xenophobia will convince Republicans to dump Graham, who has served in Congress since his election to the House in 1994.

Politico reports that a PAC called Courageous Conservatives is spending just over $700,000 on ads charging that Graham “let in illegals by the tens of millions these past 30 years” and allowed statues of Robert E. Lee and John Calhoun to be removed.

“The foreigners Graham let in are now putting up statues to their gods,” the narrator asserts. “Graham has failed South Carolina, our families, and our history.”

The winner will almost certainly go up against pediatrician Annie Andrews, who faces only two underfunded rivals in the Democratic primary.

Andrews will be the underdog in the fall in this conservative state, where Democrats last won a statewide race in 2006, but she’s hoping Trump’s national unpopularity will give her a path.

Graham has also warned that Andrews, who raised $8 million through May 20, could be a threat—especially if Lynch emerges with the GOP nod. Last month, the senator argued to Semafor, “[I]f somehow Lynch got through, it would become one of the most contentious races in the country. I think electability would be a problem for him.”

“They are very clearly behaving as if it really matters which one of them emerges from this primary,” Andrews told the site. “Both of them think they’re the only one who can beat me, and I find that incredibly entertaining.”

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Tuesday's massive primary night

Redistricting Roundup

NY Redistricting

Both chambers of New York’s Democratic-dominated legislature on Wednesday approved a constitutional amendment that would allow lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map ahead of the 2028 elections.

Legislators must pass the amendment a second time after they reconvene next year before it can appear on the ballot, likely in November of 2027.

Senate

ME-Sen

In a lengthy article published on Thursday, the New York Times reported that three women who’d had romantic involvements with Graham Platner recounted “volatile and ‘toxic’ relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.”

Platner, the oyster farmer who’s emerged as likely the Democratic nominee in Maine’s Senate race, “could be charming and charismatic” but was “demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening,” the paper wrote. He also “drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful.”

Platner’s campaign disputed some of the recollections of the three women, two of whom spoke on the record. His team rejected claims by one woman, Lyndsey Fifield, that Platner had been rough with her physically. Fifield also said that Platner was aware that the death’s head chest tattoo he had covered up last fall was a Nazi Totenkopf, which his campaign denied.

Governors

ME-Gov

Allies of former Senate President Troy Jackson and supporters of former state health director Nirav Shah have both launched negative ads targeting their rivals ahead of next week’s Democratic primary for Maine’s open governorship.

The onslaught comes, though, as a new poll shows a third candidate, former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree, winning in a ranked-choice simulation.

The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA for the Bangor Daily News and FairVote, finds Shah leading with 25% of first-choice votes, while Jackson takes 20% and Pingree 19%. The two remaining candidates are further back: businessman Angus King III is at 14%, and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows takes 11%. Another 11% are undecided.

Voters, though, were also asked to rank the remaining candidates. When votes are reallocated accordingly, Pingree surges to the front with a narrow 52-48 win over Shah in a hypothetical fourth and final round. Nearly all prior polling has shown Shah in first, but only in the first round, as few surveys have sought to simulate full ranked-choice tabulations.

Despite topping SurveyUSA’s poll, Pingree has avoided the sort of attacks that Jackson and Shah have been lobbing at one another.

The first volley in that dustup came late last week from the Working Families Party, which is urging voters to rank Jackson, Pingree, and Bellows on their ballots. The WFP has not expressed a preference between the three, who formed a slate just before Memorial Day, but it knows which candidate it doesn’t want to see move forward.

“Shah was appointed by a Republican mega-millionaire in Illinois and failed,” the WFP’s narrator says in a recent ad. “Democrats called his mistakes ‘the height of irresponsibility and negligence.’”

Shah led Illinois’ health department during then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration and held that role when an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease began at a veterans’ facility in 2015. Both Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth called for Shah’s resignation over failures to contain the disease and for waiting six days to notify the public and the families of those impacted.

Shah, who would go on to hold the same position in Maine during the COVID pandemic, defended his response this week while adding, “Any executive worth their salt has made errors, and then, hopefully has learned from them.”

The WFP’s spot attacking Shah, which the Bangor Daily News reports is backed by a $175,000 buy, does not mention any of the three candidates the party supports, or King.

But it prompted a response from Shah’s backers at 314 Action, which aids candidates with STEM backgrounds, who launched their own ad on Wednesday questioning Jackson’s commitment to abortion rights.

“He earned a 100% rating from Maine Right to Life, voted for legislation that could ban abortions,” the narrator declares. “Jackson said abortions should be illegal, even when the life of the mother is at risk.”

Jackson quickly pushed back on this latest foray from 314, which has spent around $800,000 to help Shah.

Jackson, who said in 2012 that he opposed abortion rights, tweeted on Wednesday that he’d “passed the most progressive abortion law in the country” during his subsequent tenure as Senate president.

Republicans also have a contested primary, and attorney Bobby Charles leads his six rivals in every poll. His status as the frontrunner has also made him a target, both at debates and on the air.

Real estate broker David Jones and fitness chain founder Ben Midgley have both encouraged their backers to rank the other as their second-choice option. Jones said this week that he was refusing to rank Charles at all on his own ballot.

The GOP lineup also features former state Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason; University of Maine Trustee Owen McCarth; former Paris Town Selectman Robert Wessels; and Jonathan Bush, a former healthcare executive and nephew of George H.W. Bush.

A thirteenth candidate is also running for governor, but unlike his rivals, he knows he’ll be on the ballot this November.

Election officials announced this week that state Sen. Rick Bennett, a longtime Republican who dropped his party affiliation last year, was the only independent candidate who turned in the necessary 4,000 signatures ahead of the June 1 deadline.

While both parties’ primaries will be conducted via ranked-choice voting, the system will not be used in the general election to replace Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who cannot seek a third term.

SC-Gov

Republican state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, who’d barely registered in the polls, dropped his bid for South Carolina’s open governorship less than a week before Tuesday’s primary and endorsed Attorney General Alan Wilson instead.

House

CA-34

Rep. Jimmy Gomez will face Angela Gonzales-Torres, a community activist and fellow Democrat, in the general election for California’s safely blue 34th District, the Associated Press projected Wednesday evening.

Gomez, who first won a 2017 special election to represent downtown Los Angeles and nearby areas, seemed on track for his first easy victory in years. But the congressman’s position became more precarious just hours before polls closed on Tuesday when CNN reported that the House Ethics Committee was investigating him for sexual misconduct.

Previously, Gomez’s troubles were strictly electoral in nature. For three cycles in a row, a fellow Democrat, former prosecutor David Kim, had challenged Gomez for reelection and lost just 51-49 in the general election on his second try in 2022. The incumbent fared better in 2024, but when Kim passed on a fourth attempt, it appeared no one else would pose a serious threat.

Still, three Democrats stepped forward to oppose Gomez, including Gonzales-Torres, a former leader of the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council. She earned outsized attention in September when she was endorsed by the Justice Democrats, a prominent group that frequently backs left-wing challengers to Democratic incumbents.

Gonzales-Torres, however, still struggled to raise the kind of money necessary to win. It was even possible that Calvin Lee, the lone Republican on the ballot, would instead advance past the top-two primary—an outcome that would have all but guaranteed Gomez victory in a constituency that favored Kamala Harris 73-22 in 2024.

But Gonzales-Torres easily outpaced Lee and may now face a wounded opponent. The Ethics Committee is reportedly looking into allegations that Gomez was seen kissing a staffer for another representative at a 2023 party hosted by then-Rep. Eric Swalwell, who would later resign in disgrace. The story was first reported by the New York Post.

Gomez responded by saying he had made “personal mistakes outside my marriage that have caused real pain to my wife and family.” The congressman, though, maintained his “actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House ethics rules.”

The news broke too late to impact many votes in Tuesday’s primary, and the congressman had no trouble securing a spot in the general election. ​​Gonzales-Torres, though, now has five months to make her case that this is one of several reasons voters need to oust Gomez.

“He has accepted millions from AIPAC,” ​​Gonzales-Torres tweeted Wednesday evening after learning she’d earned a spot in the general election. “He was Eric Swalwell’s campaign chair and is now under investigation too for sexual misconduct. We’re done.”

CO-08

Democratic state Rep. Manny Rutinel is getting a major infusion of help from the political arm of Somos Votantes, a Latino advocacy group that tells Politico it plans to spend $1.5 million ahead of the June 30 primary for Colorado’s competitive 8th District.

Somos PAC’s new ads slam Rutinel’s lone rival, former state Rep. Shannon Bird, for her response to ICE. In one spot, a narrator charges, “This is simple. When Trump sent ICE to terrorize children and hardworking families, Shannon Bird stood with Trump and Republicans to let it happen.”

Text on-screen references legislation to clamp down on ICE that the legislature passed last year, noting that Bird was the only Democrat to vote against it in committee. The ad then goes on to praise Rutinel for standing up to Trump and ICE.

The race for the right to take on Republican Rep. Gabe Evans was already an expensive one even before this new foray. Allies of Bird have spent more than $1.5 million so far, while Rutinel’s backers had deployed more than $1.2 million prior to Somos’ involvement.

FL-22

University administrator Belinda Keiser has joined the Republican primary for Florida’s open 22nd District and says she plans to self-fund $1 million for her bid.

Keiser is a vice chancellor at Keiser University, which was founded in the 1970s by her husband, Arthur Keiser, who is the school’s chancellor. She was also an elector for Donald Trump in 2024.

Keiser joins several other Republicans in seeking this newly gerrymandered district, which is designed to favor the GOP. The lone Democrat running is businesswoman Pia Dandiya, who has already stockpiled more than $1 million for her campaign.

FL-24

Miami-Dade Commissioner Oliver Gilbert said Thursday that he was running to represent Florida’s open and safely Democratic 24th District, while state Sen. Shevrin Jones told his supporters he would be making “an important announcement” on Tuesday. Jones’ decision to set up a fundraising committee with the FEC, though, doesn’t leave much suspense about his plans.

NY-01

New York Republicans are meddling in the June 23 Democratic primary to face GOP Rep. Nick LaLota in New York’s 1st District, a constituency covering the eastern half of Long Island that Donald Trump carried 54-44 in 2024.

Newsday reports the state GOP is sending out mailers to Democratic primary voters that ostensibly attack Lukas Ventouras, a 25-year-old law school student, for wanting to abolish ICE and for supporting “more government-run health care.”

Ventouras had previously attracted little attention ahead of his primary against Army National Guard veteran Chris Gallant, who has raised considerably more money.

DCCC

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added a third batch of candidates to its Red to Blue list of top contenders on Thursday, though one in particular stands out.

Three of the newcomers recently won primaries in competitive districts: political strategist Denise Powell in Nebraska’s 2nd; former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey’s 7th; and San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert in California’s 48th.

The fourth, though, still faces a primary: former NASA chief of staff Bale Dalton, who’s running in Florida’s 7th District against Navy veteran Marialana Kinter and businesswoman Jennifer Adams, the party’s 2024 nominee.

And unlike the contests above, Dalton’s race is much more of a reach for Democrats, as the 7th voted for Donald Trump by a 55-43 margin.

However, the seemingly endless litany of scandals plaguing Republican Rep. Cory Mills may give the party an opening, and the DCCC does not appear to be the only believer. In April, the deep-pocketed House Majority PAC announced it had reserved almost $4 million in fall TV ad time in the Orlando media market, which could be used for this race.

Poll Pile

• MN-Sen: Impact Research for Angie Craig:

  • Angie Craig (D): 51, Michele Tafoya (R): 44.

  • Peggy Flanagan (D): 51, Tafoya (R): 44.

• OK-Sen (R): JMC Analytics and Polling:

  • Kevin Hern: 41, Gary Ty England: 8, Brian Ragain: 4, other candidates 2% or less, undecided: 44.

  • JMC says it is “not affiliated with any candidate running for Governor or Senator.”

• CT-Gov (D): Change Research for Impact CT:

  • Ned Lamont (inc): 58, Josh Elliott: 20.

  • Impact CT has not made an endorsement in this race.

• ME-Gov (R): SurveyUSA for the Bangor Daily News and FairVote:

  • Bobby Charles: 34, Jonathan Bush: 17, Garrett Mason: 10, Ben Midgley: 10, Owen McCarthy: 7, David Jones: 2, Robert Wessels: 2.

• OK-Gov (R): JMC:

  • Mike Mazzei: 26, Gentner Drummond: 21, Jake Merrick: 12, Chip Keating: 12, Charles McCall: 8, other candidates 2% or less.

• MA-06: Workbench Strategy for Tram Nguyen:

  • Tram Nguyen: 28, Dan Koh: 18, Beth Andres-Beck: 9, Mariah Lancaster: 8, Jamie Belsito: 7, John Beccia: 6.

• MD-05 (D): Clarity Campaign Labs for Protect Progress (pro-Adrian Boafo):

  • Adrian Boafo: 17, Rushern Baker: 10, Quincy Bareebe: 10, Wala Blegay: 5, Harry Dunn: 5, Arthur Ellis: 2, Harry Jarin: 1, undecided: 43.

• MO-02: FM3 Research for Fred Wellman:

  • Ann Wagner (R-inc): 44, Fred Wellman (D): 41.

• NJ-07: Z to A Research for 314 Action:

  • Rebecca Bennett (D): 47, Tom Kean (R-inc): 43.

  • 314 Action, which supported Tina Shah in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, previously released only the portion of this poll testing Shah against Kean.

• SC-01: Pulse Decision Science for Jenny Costa Honeycutt:

  • Jenny Costa Honeycutt: 20, Mark Smith: 16, Logan Cunningham: 7, Sam McCown: 6, Alex Pelbath: 6, undecided: 37.

• WI-03: Impact Research for Rebecca Cooke:

  • Rebecca Cooke (D): 50, Derrick Van Orden (R-inc): 46.

  • Feb.: 49-48 Cooke.