Lindsey Graham, the talkative son of South Carolina pool hall owners, climbed his way to the center of global affairs and became one of the U.S. Senate’s most outspoken champions of American military strength.
A former military attorney who achieved the rank of colonel in the Air Force, Graham was recognized for his Southern drawl, his willingness to shift political positions, and his consistently hawkish approach to foreign affairs. He challenged Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 as a firm opponent, only to later emerge as one of the new president’s most loyal supporters.
In keeping with his high-energy style, Graham had just come back to Washington after a trip to Ukraine, where he announced a new sanctions package against Russia worked out with the Trump administration. He had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to talk about it. Trump appeared in his place instead.
“I just can’t believe it,” Trump said. “He was like a member of the family.”
Graham passed away Saturday night following what his office described as “a brief and sudden illness.” He was 71 years old.
His death drew praise from leaders around the world and, at home, from both Republicans and Democrats — a testament to his influence and his talent for building friendships across political lines. In an outpouring of tributes, fellow lawmakers expressed disbelief and remembered his humor, warmth, and passion for public life.
“He is the quintessential boy makes good story,” said Bob McAlister, a communications consultant who worked with Graham for many years. “I don’t know of anybody who, or know very few people who, started out with less and gained as much from life as he did. I guess that may be my epitaph for him.”
Graham was part of the “Never Trump” movement during the 2016 race and clashed sharply with his reality television rival throughout the campaign. He was particularly angered by Trump’s attacks on his close friend and political ally, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. “You know, run for president, but don’t be the world’s biggest jackass,” Graham said at the time.
Trump responded by reading Graham’s personal cellphone number aloud at a campaign rally, prompting Graham to joke publicly about whether he should replace it with an Android or an iPhone.
After eventually coming around to Trump — particularly in the years following McCain’s death in 2018 — Graham built considerable influence as a go-between with the White House. The two became close and were frequent golf partners, though their bond fractured for a period following the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Even so, just a year later Graham was urging fellow Republicans to get back behind Trump rather than join those calling for his political removal.
“Can I just say to my Republican colleagues — can we move forward without President Trump?” Graham said on Fox News in 2022. “The answer is no,” he continued, adding “we can’t grow without him.”
Graham was born to Millie and Florence James Graham in Central, South Carolina, on July 19, 1955. His parents ran a restaurant, bar, and pool hall in town. Graham, his parents, and his younger sister all shared a single room at the back of the building.
“It was one room, where we all slept, we all ate, we watched TV, the sofa, everything was in one room,” his sister Darline recalled in 2015.
Growing up, Graham had the run of the family’s Sanitary Cafe, where he occasionally sneaked a sip of beer or a puff from a customer’s cigarette, according to his autobiography. The regulars, who took him hunting and fishing as though he were their own child, gave him the nickname “Stinkball.”
“It was a good life,” Graham once told The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina. “I could go grab a Coke any time I wanted to. In my world, I was as rich as I could be.”
Like many establishments of that era, the Sanitary Cafe was racially segregated, Graham wrote. Black customers were required to take their drinks outside until the 1970s. However, Graham said his father — known to everyone as “Dude” — would not allow white customers to use racial slurs against Black people.
Only a C student in high school, Graham nonetheless became the first person in his family to go to college, enrolling at the University of South Carolina. While he was there, his mother died of Hodgkin lymphoma. Months later, his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died of a heart attack just as Graham began his first semester of law school.
Graham, who never married and had no children, took on guardianship of his younger sister after his parents died. Later in life, he frequently spoke about how Social Security benefits helped keep the two of them financially stable during those years.
After finishing law school, Graham served as a judge advocate general in the Air Force, beginning as a defense attorney for service members and eventually rising to serve as the Air Force’s chief prosecutor in Europe, stationed in Germany. He returned to South Carolina in 1989 but continued serving in the reserves or National Guard for decades.
Even while serving in the Senate, Graham briefly returned to active duty to help advise the Air Force during the Iraq War. He received the Bronze Star medal for his service in 2014 and formally retired as a colonel in 2015.
Back in South Carolina, Graham quickly turned to politics. He won a seat in the state legislature in 1992, followed by a U.S. House seat in 1994. He became part of a group of aggressive young Republican lawmakers who pushed to remove then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, accusing him of making too many concessions to Democratic President Bill Clinton.
Graham played a visible role in Clinton’s impeachment over an affair with a White House intern. “Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?” he asked during one House hearing. After the Republican-controlled House voted to impeach Clinton, Graham served as one of the managers presenting the case to the Senate, which ultimately voted to acquit the president.
In 2002, when South Carolina’s senior senator, Strom Thurmond, opted to retire at the age of 99, Graham ran for his seat and won. He took naturally to the Senate’s emphasis on personal relationships, sometimes starting his mornings eating alone in the Senate dining room before diving into the day’s political battles.
Vice President JD Vance recalled getting a firsthand look at Graham’s approach to politics when Vance was a newly elected senator.
“I remember getting into a shouting match with Lindsey about a Ukraine funding bill at lunch and then learning the very next day that he was pushing rail legislation I really cared about behind the scenes,” Vance said. “That was Lindsey Graham. He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted.”
A significant portion of Graham’s career was shaped by his deep friendship with McCain and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat who later became an independent. Calling themselves “The Three Amigos,” the three senators traveled the world together and pushed for U.S. involvement in several international conflicts, particularly in the Middle East following the September 11 attacks.
When McCain died in 2018, Graham wept on the Senate floor as he paid tribute to his friend.
“He failed a lot, but he never quit,” Graham said. “And the reason we’re talking about him today and the reason I’m crying is because he was successful in spite of his failures.”
In the later years of his career, Graham drew on his legal background to play a central role in judicial confirmations, especially to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2018, when Trump’s nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced allegations of sexual misconduct, Graham helped shift the momentum with a passionate defense of the federal judge.
“Boy, y’all want power. Boy, I hope you never get it,” Graham said, accusing Democrats of orchestrating a smear campaign against Kavanaugh and undermining the nomination process. “I hope the American people can see through this sham.”
Despite those fiery moments, Graham typically kept his partisan instincts in check as he cultivated his image as a dealmaker. He was a fixture in nearly every bipartisan Senate coalition.
“He was a fierce Republican partisan one day and a key bipartisan ally the next,” said Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who collaborated with Graham on immigration legislation.
Kevin Bishop, who worked for Graham for 27 years before running for Congress himself, said the senator commanded deep loyalty from his staff.
“He was incredibly fun to be around,” Bishop said. People would walk into Graham’s office with “pitchforks” and leave with a different outlook, he noted.
“He was willing to accept a lot of criticism to move the ball forward,” Bishop said.
