Sen. Lindsey Graham is projected to win a fourth term in Congress, clinching a victory over Democrat Jaime Harrison.
Graham had won 54% of the vote as of Tuesday night.
The win ensures that one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress will serve another term, despite deep frustrations among Democrats nationwide who have poured money into races where GOP lawmakers were long considered untouchable.
Harrison, 44, built a substantial war chest in his race to unseat the senator. He raised a gargantuan $57 million in the third quarter of 2020, the highest total for a quarterly period for any Senate candidate in history. Graham, 65, struggled to raise even close to the same amount as Harrison, pulling in just $28 million during that period, and took to broadcast networks several times to plea for campaign donations.
“I’m being killed financially,” Graham said on Fox News in September. “This money is because they hate my guts.”
His smaller war chest, however, didn’t matter in the end.
Graham has been a frequent target of Democratic ire during Trump’s term in office. As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has served as one of Trump’s most powerful allies in Congress who has helped install three Supreme Court justices and hundreds of judges on lower courts with lifetime appointments.
Following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September, Graham drew fierce condemnation for flip-flopping on the issue of whether a vacant seat on the Supreme Court should be filled during a presidential election year. Ginsburg’s seat was filled last month by Amy Coney Barrett.
Graham also sparked some frustration among the GOP after he shifted from being a vocal critic of the president to one of his most ardent supporters.