South Carolina doctor mounts Senate bid against Lindsey Graham: "I don't mind being an underdog"

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]And we're just under a month away from primary elections in South Carolina.

[00:00:04]Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is facing some primary challengers, but it's the possible general election matchup that's getting some attention. A poll conducted by Impact Research projects Graham winning in November, but in a generic re-election question, 57% of respondents say that they're looking to vote for someone else. Dr. Annie Andrews, Democratic candidate for South Carolina Senate, joins me now. Dr. Andrews, thank you very much for being here. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:30]>> Um so, I don't need to tell you that South Carolina is a very conservative state. Lindsey Graham has shown again and again that he uh can beat back lots of primary challengers and also uh likely to win re-election here. Um so, I guess my question is why run in that kind of atmosphere against those kinds of odds? So, I don't mind being an underdog. I am a fighter and it is clear to me that people in South Carolina are ready for something different. Lindsey Graham is a career corrupt cowardly politician. He's been our senator for 23 years now and people understand that he really has abandoned South Carolinians and he's up in Washington, D.C. really just doing the bidding of Donald Trump.

[00:01:09]And on the other hand, I'm a pediatrician and a mom who just wants to get up to D.C. and solve problems for South Carolinians. But for Democrats, I mean, the chances are such a long shot.

[00:01:19]I mean, you saw Jaime Harrison try this, uh former DNC chair with gobs of money and wasn't able to come close. Um why kind of take this step knowing those odds?

[00:01:29]>> So, our our poll shows in a head-to-head matchup, I'm just down by two points right now. So, we are very much within striking distance because of the political environment we find ourselves in. And South Carolina is not really a deep ruby red state. On a good day, we're about 57% Republican, you know, 30 43% Democrat and we can win this thing.

[00:01:51]Jaime Harrison only lost by 10 points and that was with Donald Trump on on And everything Lindsey Graham has done since 2020 has made him less and less popular. He started this war with Iran that is costing American taxpayers a billion dollars a day when we shouldn't be investing that money in our healthcare system, our public education system, and fixing our roads and bridges. The job of a US senator is to represent the state that sent you to Washington DC, and Lindsey Graham has totally lost his focus on that. And as I mentioned, you're a doctor. Um there have been measles outbreaks in South Carolina. Can you walk us through, first of all, what that dynamic has been like there?

[00:02:31]Um and in your conversations with voters or people around the state, um is there a level of concern about changes in vaccine recommendations and what the state might be doing?

[00:02:44]Absolutely. So, the upstate of South Carolina has been really central to a measles outbreak that resulted in nearly 1,000 cases of documented measles, which means there were probably 2 to 3,000 actual cases of the measles. And the folks that were really concerned about that was new parents, parents of children who are too young to get that MMR vaccine, which is safe and effective at preventing the measles virus. And this is a direct result of the conspiracy theories that our current Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr., has been pedaling in for decades. He is a grifter, and he has no business having anything to do with the process of public health policy making. And I blame Lindsey Graham for this because he abdicated his duty as a US senator when he voted to confirm RFK Jr. And as a result, children have unnecessarily suffered, been sick, and even one young boy in the upstate was hospitalized for weeks and lost the ability to walk and talk and feed himself. So, we need to get back to the process of serious scientific, evidence-based policy making in Washington DC, and that's why I'm so excited to be running in this election cycle. I would be our nation's first-ever pediatrician senator, the first female doctor in the US Senate, and I would say it's about time. I want to ask a little bit of the dynamics of the Democratic Party. I mean, you were running as an outsider. You haven't been in elected office before. Um, what do you think your party needs to do differently? Um, what have you seen that really needs an overhaul? We need to fight fire with fire. We need to realize that the 2008 playbook will not translate to 2026.

[00:04:15]We need to take our gloves off, and we need to learn how to be more effective messengers. Democrats get it right when it comes to policy making, but what we lack is the ability to go back and communicate our wins, communicate our our successes. We see Donald Trump putting his name on Biden infrastructure projects. We see him now putting his name on our money and on our passports.

[00:04:37]Democrats need to be loud and proud when we do have the opportunity to lead and we do deliver successes for the American people, and we need to meet people where they are. We need to talk like regular people to regular people. And we've just for so long been caught up in this DC machine, and we've lost our focus on the people who sent us to represent them.

[00:04:55]And that's why I think it's important for a generational shift in leadership, which I would represent, and for outsiders like I am, who just want to get up to Washington, DC, and use the power of our political process to solve the problems of the people in our districts. All right. Well, we will be keeping an eye on this race heading into the midterms. Dr. Annie Andrews, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.