Politics
The lines Bill Ferguson won’t cross
When Wes Moore and Bill Ferguson stood together in a Baltimore bar on a sweltering Saturday afternoon in the summer of 2022, the two political figures projected a promising vision of power for Democrats in a blue-leaning state where they stood on the cusp of fully controlling government.
Moore was a former Rhodes Scholar and decorated combat veteran who was running for governor with Oprah Winfrey’s blessing but no experience in public office. Ferguson was a tactful consensus-builder who arrived in Annapolis with the moniker of “baby senator” before rising to become the chamber president a decade later.
“I’m a Baltimorean,” Moore told the campaign volunteers gathered in the Federal Hill neighborhood that Ferguson had represented since first being elected in 2010 at the age of 27. “Who’s making these decisions matters.”
Three years later, Maryland’s two top Democrats find themselves unable to agree on a big one. Moore has become a champion of redrawing his state’s U.S. congressional lines to generate an additional seat for his party in next year’s midterm elections. Ferguson, scarred by an earlier experience in which he helped deliver such an extreme map only to see it struck down by courts, is refusing to commit to even allowing a vote on a new redistricting measure.
The new rupture highlights a fault line emerging within both parties as Democrats and Republicans scour the national map for opportunities to improve their congressional positions via gerrymandering — between the short-term priorities of their respective national parties and the often longer-range yet parochial concerns of state legislative leaders.
For Democrats, the most immediate obstacle to further gains is Ferguson, whose defiance has made him a villain to party officials nationwide. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke with Ferguson in October ensuring he “understands the assignment,” as Jeffries put it. “We need the state of Maryland,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said upon redrawing his state’s maps via passage of Proposition 50 to give his party five Democrat-leaning seats in the state. “Grow a pair” and stand up to President Donald Trump, a top Virginia lawmaker bluntly instructed Ferguson the next day.
The stand-off will likely come to a head in the coming weeks, as Moore faces an imminent choice: Call a special session and rely on Ferguson to deliver a majority for a gerrymandered map, or wait for the General Assembly to return in January for a regular session to allow more time for negotiations. Either way, the governor will have to convince 24 of the 34 Democratic senators to buck a respected leader whose control of campaign funds could help determine the fate of their reelection bids.
The view from outside Maryland may have Moore, a likely 2028 presidential contender, towering over Ferguson. But in Annapolis, many think it is the Senate president who has made the better case for how Democrats should move forward.
Ferguson “holds the cards” on redistricting, says former state Sen. Jill Carter, who served under both men. “Moore is very popular and charismatic, but Bill is very politically savvy.”
William Claiborne Ferguson IV was born in Silver Spring, just outside of Washington, to a conservative-leaning father who worked in commercial real estate and a labor union-supporting mother who adored former President Bill Clinton. Ferguson attended Georgetown Preparatory School — the elite, all-boys Jesuit academy that also produced conservative Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — and Davidson College in North Carolina, where he studied politics and economics with sights on a business career.
But a post-collegiate stint with Teach for America at one of Baltimore’s toughest schools veered Ferguson away from his father’s career and towards one in left-leaning politics. While serving as an aide to local-government officials, Ferguson pursued a law degree at the University of Maryland and prepared to seek office. In 2010 he challenged Democratic state Sen. George W. Della Jr., who had been first elected in the year before Ferguson was born. As the primary devolved into mudslinging, Ferguson tried to keep the choice simple for voters: stick with the status quo or march with him into the future.
Ferguson came to a chamber dominated by Maryland Senate President Mike Miller, known for deploying hardball tactics to keep his caucus in line over what became a 33-year tenure in the role. As the chamber’s youngest senator, Ferguson won a reputation as a mild-mannered nerd who mastered education policy and the state budget while being teased by his staff for not knowing classic rock tunes.
When Miller prepared to retire in 2020, senate Democrats turned to the then-36-year-old Ferguson, unanimously voting him the next senate president. Many in the party cheered his ascension as a generational and philosophical pivot to a new progressive era in the state capital.
“Bill Ferguson is more collaborative. He listens. He is open to changing his mind when … arguments are effectively made,” said state Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat who served under both Miller and Ferguson. “He’s less of a king and more of a leader among equals.”
Ferguson, now 42, spent much of his first few sessions as the Senate’s top Democrat in trying to reel in then-Gov. Larry Hogan’s Republican agenda. In the final two years of Hogan’s second term, Maryland Democrats overrode the governor’s vetoes more than two dozen times. Ferguson also scored some bipartisan wins, too, helping Hogan deliver on a campaign promise by passing the largest tax cut in state history.
But it was a standoff with Hogan following the 2020 Census that left an indelible mark on Ferguson.
Maryland had gained a half-million people over the previous decade, even as its largest city, Baltimore, suffered a steep population drop. Hogan saw the churn as an opening to target a Democrat-held congressional district — the 6th, stretching north from the Washington, D.C. suburbs to the Pennsylvania border and west to the West Virginia line — often described as one of the nation’s most gerrymandered. Hogan established a nonpartisan redistricting commission, which returned a map that had two of Maryland’s eight seats leaning Republican.
When Hogan called a special legislative session in December 2021 to approve the map, Democrats rebelled. With supermajorities in both chambers, they instead passed their own over Hogan’s opposition, turning seven districts into safe Democratic seats and the long Republican-dominated 1st district — represented by House Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris — into toss-up territory.
“I felt a little bit uncomfortable, I’ll be totally candid, with the first map we passed,” Ferguson recalled recently to The Bulwark. “I thought, I’m willing to help facilitate this process.”
After Republicans sued, astate court ruled in March 2022 that the Democrats’ map amounted to an “extreme partisan gerrymander” that violated the state Constitution. Already well into an election year, senior Judge Lynne Battaglia gave lawmakers just days to pass a new map. Democratic lawmakers had little choice but to pass a revised map that would win Hogan’s signature. Republicans kept their hold on the 1st district and Democrats have not since mounted a serious challenge to Harris there.
Ferguson, who declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article, now says he made a misjudgment in acquiescing to more seasoned leaders who convinced him a maximalist strategy would stand up to legal scrutiny. Seeing it shot down by the courts gives him a “different calculus of the risk,” as he told the Bulwark, about any attempt at a nakedly partisan gerrymander.
“Experience does matter. What you’ve seen and gone through in the past does matter,” said Malcolm Augustine, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Maryland Senate. “That’s the bottom line. He was there.”
On an unseasonably warm afternoon in January 2023, Ferguson stood at the state house to welcome Moore — a well-reviewed author and former college football player, Army officer, investment banker and nonprofit executive — to Annapolis. The ceremony dripped with nods to Moore’s status as Maryland’s first African-American governor. Ferguson, who is white, stood less than three feet away as Moore placed his hand on a Bible belonging to abolitionist Fredrick Douglass during the swearing-in, which was held in a private event in the Senate chamber.
Moments later, at the public outdoor ceremony before a crowd that included actor Chris Tucker and presidential daughter Chelsea Clinton, the new governor name-checked Ferguson in the second line of his inaugural address. “It’s an honor to be your partner,” Moore said.
After years of playing defense against a Republican executive, Ferguson now had an ally who could allow legislative Democrats to define a proactive agenda. Many wanted to use the state’s structural surplus to fund mortgage assistance programs for first-time homebuyers and cancel parole debt for long-serving inmates.
Early optimism about what the state’s Democratic trifecta could deliver evaporated. Economic downturns ballooned the state deficit, as the Trump’s administration’s dismantling of the federal workforce and government contracts hit Maryland especially hard. Earlier this year, legislators resorted to raising taxes and fees by $1.6 billion — and have braced for lingering effects from the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history. The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore last year that left six people dead has become an unending catastrophe: A state agency last month estimated bridge-repair costs have doubled while the expected reopening has been delayed by years.
This year, Maryland’s two top Democrats have found themselves frequently at odds. In April, Moore was unable to pass a bill expanding the state’s reliance on nuclear power, reclassifying it to count towards clean-energy goals. Ferguson’s critics haveaccused the Senate president of killing the bill to benefit the Baltimore solar-panel company where he works as an executive. (Officials in Maryland’s part-time legislature are permitted to maintain outside employment.)
When Ferguson the next month helped deliver a bill forming a commission to study reparations for descendants of slavery, Moore vetoed it. The surprising rebuff was viewed by many Senate Democrats, including those in the General Assembly’s Black Caucus, as motivated by Moore’s desire to demonstrate to a national audience that he was willing to buck his own party. “I strongly believe now is not the time for another study,” Moore wrote to Ferguson in a May 16 veto letter.
But it was a national movement on redistricting that did most to fracture Ferguson and Moore’s relationship. In June, Republicans in Texas — under public pressure from the White House — first entertained the possibility of redrawing their U.S. House maps to produce more Republican-friendly seats. Democrats looked for states where they could offset Texas’s moves with partisan gerrymanders of their own.
Maryland appeared a natural candidate to join the growing Democratic counteroffensive. While California, Colorado and Virginia would have to amend their state constitutions for politicians to redraw lines mid-decade — and in New York a lawsuit to upend the status quo — pulling off such a move in Maryland would require only simple legislation. In August, Democratic state Sen. Clarence Lam introduced a bill that would place more liberal-leaning voters in the Republican-held 1st district.
Moore soon embraced the idea of moving forward with such plans. In September, he accused Trump of “attempting to gerrymander Black leaders out of office” and called the actions of Republican legislatures akin to “political redlining” in a speech at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner.
“It’s time for Maryland to have a conversation about whether we have a fair map or not,” he told reporters then.
Ferguson, too, expressed openness to the redistricting idea, telling Blue Light News earlier that month that a mid-decade gerrymander was “the last possible option that we should explore, but we won’t sit by idly and watch democracy get undermined.”
But as the pressure nationally ramped up, the more his ambivalence began to surface. He reminded colleagues of a 2002 state-court decision in which judges redrew Baltimore-area state senate districts upon ruling that a map drawn by Democrats violated constitutional requirements for Maryland’s districts to be “compact in form” around county lines and bodies of water. Ferguson also likes to point out that since the more recent smackdown of the 2021 gerrymander, Maryland’s Supreme Court still does not favor Democrats: five of the seven judges now on the court were appointed by Hogan.
That make-up, Ferguson suggests, could mean if the courts throw out any newly passed map, reverting to congressional boundaries with the current 7-1 advantage is not a foregone conclusion — and a replacement could end up a lot worse for Democrats.
Other Democrats who participated in the 2021 redistricting case see the legal issues differently. “There’s no binding precedent in Maryland that would impact congressional redistricting in the way that I think Senator Ferguson fears,” former Attorney General Brian Frosh said in an interview last month.
Amid the uproar, congressional Democrats set their sights on Ferguson. Jeffries, who would become speaker if his party retakes the House, called Ferguson multiple times to make the case that the time was right for a partisan gerrymander. Days later, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a poll showing a majority of Maryland voters did not just support redistricting, but “are likely to support primary candidates that support Maryland redistricting by wide margins,” according to an accompanying memo from Change Research. Former Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer and Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin — a former state senator who served alongside Ferguson for six years — issued a public letter on Nov. 10 calling it an “ethical moral and political imperative” that state lawmakers break with the Senate president.
Moore, too, began ramping up pressure on Ferguson. He formed a Governor’s Redistricting Advisory Commission that holds virtual meetings with residents to solicit recommendations to the governor and the General Assembly on whether to move forward with redistricting. At the first meeting, Ferguson — the only member of the panel who has publicly opposed Moore’s plan — was seen nodding in solidarity with members of the public imploring the commission to stand down on redrawing lines.
Moore also launched a “Leave No One Behind” legislative slate, something akin to a political action committee that those around the governor suggest he may use to launch primary challenges to incumbent Democratic lawmakers. (Moore’s office declined a request to interview him for this article.)
If anything, the public pressure seems to be hardening Ferguson’s hesitation about redistricting into full-blown resistance. In late October, a week after speaking with Jeffries, Ferguson issued a memo to his Senate caucus laying out his biggest fear about moving forward: that his party could end up losing up to two seats if more aggressive maps were struck down and ordered redrawn by the courts. The “certainty” of the current map, he wrote, “evaporates the moment we start down the path or redistricting mid-cycle.”
“The legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous and the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic,” Ferguson wrote.
Some of the Democrats in Ferguson’s caucus have begun to internalize his arguments. Nick Charles, whose senate district covers Prince George’s County, a wealthy majority Black suburb outside of Washington, said his constituents want lawmakers to join the national fight, but soften when they learn of the potential risks.
“What happens if we take that position?” asked Charles. “On the surface, it looks good, like ‘Man, we look like we’re fighting.’ But it’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Still other Democrats are growing more confident in their depictions of Ferguson as timid and naïve.
“I think President Ferguson … is an awesome public servant, very thoughtful guy, and certainly intends well,” said Baltimore city Councilman Mark Conway, who last month announced he would challenge Rep. Kweisi Mfume for not doing enough to confront Trump. Conway sides with Moore on redistricting and is disappointed by Ferguson for not jumping into the brawl. “I just think we’re looking at a new day and maybe some of the toughest times we’ve ever had as a country in light of the willingness of Republicans to do whatever it takes to secure power.”
Ferguson has already drawn his own primary challenge from social-media influencer Bobby LaPin — a charter-boat captain and political novice known to 90,000 followers on Instagram as the “Sail Local Guy” — who has said the Senate president’s resistance to redrawing maps pushed him to run.
Those close to Ferguson say he knows the intricacies of keeping his caucus together and brushes off the outside pressure campaign as political distractions. Ferguson had closely watched developments in Indiana, where Republican legislative leaders for weeks held off pressure from the White House and the state’s governor to take up redistricting, and had taken solace in their successful defiance. But those leaders reversed course and will begin a special session this week.
Maryland’s commission will end its work in December, which Moore could use as a basis to call a special session to take on the redistricting question. Otherwise, Moore could hold off until mid-January, when lawmakers return for their regular 90-day session. That would leave little wiggle room to move maps through the legislature, and limited time to survive likely legal challenges before the state’s all-important June primaries.
Each option carries political risks for Moore. Ferguson has the power to essentially ignore the governor’s desires by convening a special session and then quickly adjourning before a vote on redistricting. If Moore waits to focus his pressure campaign in January, Ferguson could respond by otherwise working to stymie the governor’s agenda at a moment he is hoping to elevate his national profile, including by overriding Moore’s veto of the reparations bill.
“It’s not going to be a good session for him, at least not starting,” a legislative aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly of Ferguson’s calculations, said of the governor. “He’s not going to get shit through — not a confirmation, not a thing.”
While Moore may feel urgency to join Democrats’ redistricting bonanza in time to shape the midterm elections, that time crunch is of little relevance to Ferguson. The Senate president is half a decade into his role leading the Maryland Senate — a blip compared to a predecessor who held it for more than three decades — and Ferguson expects to be still toiling away in Annapolis well beyond 2028.
Moore’s “only way out of the box that he’s built for himself is to either change Bill’s mind, which doesn’t seem likely … or it’s doing something that Wes has never done before in his life, and literally take out another politician — a sitting Maryland Senate president,” said Doug Mayer, a Republican strategist who worked for Hogan. “Bill Ferguson lives here, Wes Moore is just staying here. That’s why Bill Ferguson is saying no to this.”
Democrats have figured out how to talk about the border. They still haven’t reached a consensus on ICE.
In battlegrounds across the country, moderate and progressive Democrats alike are calling for a secure border and admitting the Biden administration’s policy there led to political backlash in 2024. But with less than three months until Election Day, they still aren’t on the same page in how far to go in reining in Immigration and Customs Enforcement — with some high-profile candidates pushing reforms, and others calling to dissolve the agency altogether.
Many in the party see an opening: Half of Americans view President Donald Trump’s deportation push as too aggressive. But some Democrats are starting to worry that going too far on ICE could again kneecap their electoral chances in key battlegrounds now and in the future.
“The party is still struggling to get its footing on this issue and talk to voters about this,” said Daniel Delgado, a senior career Department of Homeland Security official who left the department after Trump took office in 2025 and now works as a senior fellow at the center-left Searchlight Institute think tank in Washington. “Trump’s actions are pushing people to adopt a more extreme position, but reform is what’s sticking with voters in the middle.”
Democratic candidates are pulled between a fired-up base that wants to see ICE abolished or dramatically reined in, and an undecided voter bloc that’s much less likely to support drastic measures — all while continuing to distance themselves from the Biden administration’s border policies that become political kryptonite for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 race.
A new Blue Light News Poll — conducted by Public First between Aug. 8 to 12 — found that just 21 percent of undecided midterm voters say they support abolishing ICE, while 51 percent of self-described moderate Democrats and 67 percent of progressive Democrats say they do.
Those findings track with other polling this year from Navigator Research and NBC News/SurveyMonkey that found Democrats are much more likely than independents to support abolishing ICE, though support for full abolition falls across all groups when respondents are given the option to “reform” the agency.
“A Democratic primary electorate represents less than 25 percent of general election voters,” said Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, a former Bernie Sanders campaign veteran now advising Texas state Rep. James Talarico’s Senate campaign and numerous other candidates this cycle. “The electorate is really pissed, and the Democratic electorate has been very energized, but also these are different electorates from state-to-state.”
Battleground candidates running in border states like Arizona and Texas are calling for ICE officers to be held accountable and guardrails to be installed for the agency — like Talarico, who wants ICE to focus on violent criminals and be banned from using face coverings. Meanwhile, progressive nominees in key Senate contests in Maine and Michigan say the agency is beyond saving, and have used the potent catchphrase “abolish ICE.”
The intraparty divide was on display in Austin last weekend, where Democratic National Committee members could not reach a consensus on whether ICE should be abolished or reformed, eventually approving dueling resolutions that called for both.
That disunity comes as Democrats’ 2028 path to the White House will run straight through two early primary states with significant Hispanic populations — Nevada and border-state New Mexico — all but guaranteeing that immigration enforcement will be a central point of contention.
Immigration enforcement is an issue where Democrats in 2024 “really missed the opportunity to be who we are: smart, fair, and can deliver aggressively through Congress the things that really make a difference. And we couldn’t say it. We didn’t deal with it,” said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has called for more accountability regarding ICE but argues abolishing it is not a winning message. “Shame on us then. We better not make these mistakes again — now, in ’26, in the midterms, and certainly not in 28.”
Some of the party’s battleground Senate nominees, even as they support securing the border, see a path to victory with an abolish-ICE message.
Troy Jackson, Democrats’ nominee in Maine, called to eliminate the agency in response to a federal immigration agent killing a man in the state in July and has used the incident to hammer his opponent, GOP Sen. Susan Collins, for voting to further fund ICE.
And Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has called to abolish ICE and likened the agency’s hardline tactics to “normalizing paramilitary force.”
“There’s no question we need a safe, secure southern border. And there’s also no question that we have a responsibility to enforce immigration policy, but to do that in a way that does not supersede the Constitution itself,” El-Sayed said in an interview.
But he also acknowledged “different communities” around the country “are going to think differently about these things.”
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the Democratic nominee for Senate, has avoided explicitly calling to abolish ICE, but has tiptoed up to the line: “We need to rip ICE apart,” she said in her primary-night victory speech. She won a hard-fought primary in Minnesota’s Senate race by castigating her Democratic rival’s votes with Republicans on a pair of immigration-related measures. She opened her general-election clash against Michele Tafoya by accusing the Republican of supporting the Trump administration’s violent tactics in her state.
Border-state Democrats sound different.
Moderate Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who currently sits as ranking member on the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, frequently tells voters during stump speeches that he will chair the subcommittee should Democrats retake control of the House — and he’ll use that position to push reforms in the next DHS funding bill, like mandatory use of body cameras, requiring judicial warrants before entering a home or worksite, and reinstalling guidance on avoiding enforcement in sensitive areas like churches and hospitals.
“Let me just say this: I don’t believe in abolishing ICE. I don’t believe in defunding the police. There’s a role for them,” he told reporters last month after meeting with Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a nun detained by ICE while walking to Sunday Mass. “But they have to have the right safeguards. What ICE is doing right now is not right. It is not correct.”
The South Texas Democrats pay little heed to the loudest voices in the party calling to abolish ICE. “I personally don’t follow what national Democrats are saying on this,” said Abel Prado, the campaign manager for Bobby Pulido, the Democratic nominee in Texas’ 15th District.
Some other candidates are altering their message now, too. William Lawrence, the Sunshine Movement co-founder who won the Democratic primary in Michigan’s swingy 7th District, called in January to abolish ICE. But he sidestepped when Blue Light News asked this week if that was still his position.
“I don’t care what our immigration enforcement agency is called,” Lawrence said in a statement. “What I care about is immigration policy that adheres to the Constitution and lives up to our country’s highest values.”
Frank Sharry, a longtime Democratic immigration activist, said Democrats would be wise to avoid the phrase.
“I don’t think that ‘abolish ICE’ gets you much more than a little bit of play in a primary and a round of applause in the blue bubble,” said Sharry, a senior fellow at Third Way who advised both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during their 2024 campaigns on immigration policy. “Democratic candidates who want to win the seats that are going to deliver a majority of the House and the Senate, and then the White House in 2028, would be wise to steer clear of a rally slogan.”
President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail Friday to help save the candidacy of Sen. Darline Graham after a major debate gaffe raised questions about her readiness to replace her late brother and the wisdom of his endorsement.
Speaking at a rally in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, days before a Senate runoff featuring Graham and Rep. Ralph Norman, Trump urged voters to support the sister of his ally Lindsay Graham, the longtime foreign policy hawk who died last month.
“We’re going to elect Senator Darline Graham to fight, fight, fight for South Carolina and to always put America first,” he said. “You vote for her, you’re going to be very proud of that vote.”
Trump also reflected on his close friendship with Lindsey Graham, invoking the memory of the stalwart of the South Carolina GOP who represented the state in Congress for 31 years.
“I think Lindsey respected Darline more than any other person he knows, including me,” he said.
Trump pushed for Darline Graham’s appointment to fill out the remainder of her brother’s term, offering his endorsement before she even formally launched her campaign.
But the value of Trump’s endorsement has arguably never been weaker. He has seen some notable favorites fall in recent primaries — including in South Carolina, where Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette lost the state’s gubernatorial primary to state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
Trump’s choice for governor in Wyoming lost on Tuesday, along with two Florida Republicans who scored his endorsement in House primaries. Also among the recent losers: Mike Lindell, the former MyPillow CEO and close ally who fell short in the Minnesota gubernatorial primary.
Those came after losses of Trump-endorsed candidates in Georgia, Michigan and Iowa earlier this year.
The president touted Graham’s focus on affordability and her support for traditional conservative social issues like the Second Amendment. But his primary pitch to Republicans in South Carolina was to treat Graham as an extension of himself.
“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just come and vote. It’s so important,” he said. “Just say that I’m on the ballot one more time.”
Graham sailed into the runoff, topping second-place Norman by eight percentage points. But an alarming debate hiccup over a question on the U.S.-Taiwan relationship in which she admitted she’s “not that informed on national security” and that “national security is not my thing,” triggered a pile-on from Republicans in South Carolina and elsewhere expressing concerns about her qualifications.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Norman supporter, slammed Graham for her debate answer. And former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford endorsed Norman hours ahead of the rally on Friday, noting that “the stakes are too high” to back Graham.
Trump appeared unbothered by Graham’s admission, telling reporters ahead of the rally that her loyalty to the president’s agenda was all that mattered.
“She was just being honest,” Trump said. “It hasn’t been her thing, but she’s surrounded by very good people, and she said that she’s totally for the military.”
“She’s going to do what the military wants, and really what the president wants,” he continued. “She understands that national security is my thing.”
Speaking ahead of the president, Graham attempted to sidestep the concerns about her resume by recalling Trump’s lack of political experience before his 2016 victory.
“The critics say I shouldn’t run for the senate. They say I’m not a politician. You know what I say? Guilty as charged,” she said, prompting a wave of applause from the crowd. “By the way, President Trump had never served in an elected office before, and I think he’s done a damn good job.”
Trump’s visit prompted an endorsement ahead of the rally from Gov. Henry McMaster, who said Graham “continued Lindsey Graham’s work, and stood firmly with President Trump to advance his America First agenda” while serving out the remainder of her brother’s term.
The president’s trip to the state — a rare as-advertised campaign rally amid a sea of official White House events elevating his endorsed candidates — marks a significant expenditure of the president’s political capital. The president hasn’t held in-person rallies for Republicans Senate candidates in many battleground states, opting instead for social media posts and telerallies. And he has yet to dip into the $403 million war chest at his primary super PAC, MAGA Inc., drawing some consternation from Republicans.
Trump told reporters on Friday he’ll spend “a lot of that money” to boost “Republican candidates that I think are good,” without being specific.
Trump warned of the stakes of losing control of Congress in the midterms, saying that Democrats will follow through on reported plans to investigate and impeach him.
“You’re going to lose everything,” he said. “I’m going to have to go through impeachment.”
Alec Hernandez contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump is going the extra mile for Sen. Darline Graham in deep-red South Carolina.
That’s left battleground Republicans wondering when it’ll be their turn, even while they acknowledge Trump’s campaign trip is in part owing to his strong ties with the candidate’s late brother, former Sen. Lindsey Graham. It’s also caused several supporters of Graham’s primary opponent to scratch their heads at the sudden attention he’s giving a state that is far from critical for ensuring GOP control in Washington. Trump is bringing back his hallmark campaign rally for Graham on Friday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, just days ahead of her runoff against Republican Rep. Ralph Norman.
It’s a far cry from the quieter strategy the president has used for candidates in battleground races in Georgia, Michigan and Texas: a couple supportive social media posts and, in some cases, a telerally on the eve of Election Day.
“It’s going to be a red seat,” said Randy Page, a longtime Republican operative in South Carolina who is supporting Norman in the race. “If I were the president, if I were giving him political advice, I’d say: ‘We’re right next to Georgia, we’re right next to North Carolina. Texas ain’t that far away.’ There are some real places that are going to affect the party keeping control of either the House or the Senate, and it’s like he’s just flying over them and ignoring them.”
Strategists involved with GOP candidates who could use Trump’s base-boosting help elsewhere are eagerly waiting to see whether he’ll put the same effort into their own races later this year.
“He’s coming in person for Darline Graham. He really hasn’t done much else,” said one GOP operative involved in several battleground races, including in Georgia, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “He probably has the ability to move the needle in Republicans’ favor better than anyone else in the country. The question is just: Will he? Is he willing to? Does he want to? Does he care enough?”
Trump’s appearance in Myrtle Beach is a significant and explicit foray back to the campaign trail in a year in which his previous appearances with his endorsed candidates were mainly on official White House business, focused on issues like affordability and domestic energy production. It also comes at a crucial moment for Graham, who is looking for a momentum boost after an embarrassing debate stage fumble on foreign policy.
He appeared with Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo in Las Vegas for an official event earlier this month billed to tout tax cuts in a state where the governor is facing a tough reelection battle. In late July, he traveled to suburban Atlanta to deliver remarks where he touted GOP Rep. Mike Collins’ Senate bid against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff (Collins himself was absent because of votes in Washington). And a month earlier, he took part in a roundtable discussion with frontline GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
But it’s been far less than in years past. Trump was ever-present on the campaign trail during the 2018 midterms, and blitzed across the country for rallies during his 2024 election bid, but his travel has been somewhat curtailed since he has faced two attempts on his life that same year.
The Friday rally is the kind of support that some Republican candidates wished had come for them in their own contentious primaries — and operatives in states with competitive general election matchups hope it signals more presidential help is on the horizon before November.
Trump’s heavy hand and his grip over the Republican Party has continued to shape the outcome of several primaries this year, but the degree to which he will help ensure control of Congress this fall — both through campaign appearances and spending his $400 million MAGA Inc. war chest — remains an open question.
For some Republicans in battleground states watching from afar, Trump’s Friday appearance with Graham is a reminder of how little time the president spent on the campaign trail during the primary season.
“Him posting on True Social and doing a tele-town hall has kind of, from what I can tell, been kind of the limit of what he’s done for most endorsed candidates. So this is a little different that he’s going down there,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist based in Texas who worked with Sen. John Cornyn on his unsuccessful reelection primary earlier this year and said he will support the Republican ticket this fall.
The White House dismissed concerns over Trump’s attention on South Carolina over other states in a statement.
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican party who is committed to maintaining Republicans’ majority in Congress,” said White House spokesperson Olivia Wales. “President Trump will continue to draw a sharp contrast with his commonsense agenda and the radical Democrats in Congress who allowed millions of illegal aliens to flow through the border, unanimously opposed the Working Families Tax Cuts, and are soft-on-crime.”
Several Republicans said that Trump’s Friday rally is likely borne from his long and mostly close relationship with Sen. Lindsey Graham, who Graham’s sister Darline and Norman are running to replace.
“It’s partly that this one is unique,” Mackowiak said. “It’s partly about Lindsey and about I think he’s doing what he thinks Lindsey would have wanted him to do, and so he wants to see that through and see that succeed.”
Regardless of the impetus behind the decision to travel to the Palmetto State, the president’s in-person appearance is a major boon for Graham’s campaign, and her team is eager to capitalize on the rare in-person campaign moment as the recently appointed senator has weathered criticism over her political inexperience. Trump “knows Senator Darline is a true MAGA ally who will help him implement his agenda and fight against the Woke mob better than any other Senate candidate in the country,” Graham spokesperson Abby Zilch said in a statement.
Graham made a significant gaffe on the debate stage earlier this week, when she said “I’m not that informed on national security” in response to a question on U.S. interests in Taiwan. Norman’s allies were quick to seize on the moment to drive home their message that she’s “underprepared” for the office.
A person with direct knowledge of Graham’s campaign’s strategy acknowledged the misstep, but insisted that she had sufficiently cleaned up the flub during a Fox News appearance with Sean Hannity. Now, their focus is on the president’s visit: “This rally allows the campaign to own statewide earned media for a couple days,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “The Trump endorsement is big, but him coming in state is bigger. President Trump is all in.”
If Graham falls short on Tuesday, it will be one of Trump’s most embarrassing in a recent string of losses this primary season. He pushed for her appointment to the Senate to complete her late brother’s term and openly encouraged her to run for a full six years, with his backing.
Plus, he’s already stumbled in South Carolina before: His first pick in this year’s governor’s race, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, lost momentum to Attorney General Alan Wilson in the primary, leading to a rare double endorsement from Trump at the last minute.
Several Norman supporters think that Trump should put his focus elsewhere — even if they agree with the president on virtually every other issue.
“Michigan and Ohio and Alaska, Maine and Texas are all at risk of losing to the Democrats,” said state Rep. Jordan Pace, who has endorsed Norman’s bid. “That’s where the money and the attention should be, shoring up those states.”
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