Lindsey Graham (R), the senior senator from South Carolina, passed away unexpectedly in Washington, D.C., Saturday night at the age of 71. The man lauded as a “modern day lion of the Senate” left a unique immigration legacy, and a void larger than his single vote in a body struggling to enact key pieces of the president’s agenda before the congressional midterm elections — and to address the lingering fallout of the Biden years and curb “birth tourism”.
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The late senator was born in Seneca, S.C., a town in the western part of the Palmetto State with a current population of less than 9,500, not far from Clemson University but not near much else.
After receiving his bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of South Carolina, Graham served in the U.S. Air Force (1982 to 1988), the South Carolina Air National Guard (1989 to 1995), and the reserves (until 2015), eventually being elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992.
He wasn’t in the state legislature long, joining 51 other new GOP colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives after Republicans swept the 1994 elections and captured the lower chamber for the first time in four decades behind Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America”.
When he was sworn in on January 3, 1995, Graham became the first Republican to represent South Carolina’s 3rd congressional district since Reconstruction, with an assignment to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Graham rose to prominence during his second House term when he was appointed to be a manager of the committee’s impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton in 1998.
He voted to impeach the 42nd president, but although the Senate eventually acquitted Clinton, Graham’s prosecution of the case raised his profile enough to put him in a position to replace long-serving GOP Sen. Strom Thurmond, who retired from the senate at the age of 100 in January 2003 after eight terms.
Graham was unlikely to ever best his predecessor’s tenure in the Senate but was seeking reelection to his own fifth term at the time of his death.
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