After Senator Lindsey Graham died last month, his sister, Darline Graham, essentially inherited his seat in Congress.<\/p>\n
With it, she inherited his office on Capitol Hill, his staff in Washington and back home in South Carolina, and his key spots on coveted committees. For a brief time, Ms. Graham was bequeathed her deceased brother\u2019s security detail.<\/p>\n
But the new Republican senator from South Carolina did not inherit her brother Lindsey\u2019s gift of gab.<\/p>\n
In the weeks since Ms. Graham came to Washington to fill her brother\u2019s seat and then quickly said she would run to succeed him, she has shied away from the media attention that Mr. Graham so often relished. That has left many unanswered questions about the views and positions of a woman who had never held public office.<\/p>\n
Where Lindsey was loquacious and often pontificated on the news of the day, Darline has rarely addressed the reporters who ask her questions at the Capitol. She has spoken little in committee hearings, and has taken part in few interviews.<\/p>\n
Ms. Graham\u2019s relative silence is particularly striking given her decision to run for Mr. Graham\u2019s seat, one she made just days after being sworn in on July 14. Her decision to run has intensified scrutiny of her statements and has put her in a different light than had she only been a caretaker of the seat.<\/p>\n
Because Mr. Graham was running for re-election when he died, Republicans will vote on Tuesday in a special primary election to replace him on the ballot. That has given the public a strikingly short window to evaluate Ms. Graham, a political novice whose views on many major issues are largely unknown.<\/p>\n
This week, Ms. Graham remained mum when asked about her support for eliminating the filibuster, a position she took in a debate that marked a notable break with her brother. She looked toward the elevator floor rather than acknowledge a question about the \u201cblue slip,\u201d a longstanding Senate tradition defended by Mr. Graham that gives home-state senators veto power over judicial nominations.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, an aide accompanying Ms. Graham waved off a question about a sanctions bill that was championed by her brother. The aide said that the senator would not grant hallway interviews until she became more familiar with the geography of the sprawling Capitol complex.<\/p>\n
Ms. Graham is not the only lawmaker to eschew hallway questions. Most senators, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, routinely answer drive-by inquiries from reporters. But a few resolutely refuse them.<\/p>\n
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the No. 3 Republican, has repeatedly advised his G.O.P. colleagues to avoid responding to reporters in hallways, guidance that most of them ignore. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina routinely refers questions to his office. Before a long absence<\/a>, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky regularly responded to hallway questions with a silent stare.<\/p>\n Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat running for governor of her state, often holds her phone to her ear when heading to votes, a common tactic used by lawmakers to indicate they are unavailable to chat.<\/p>\n But Ms. Graham\u2019s reticence stands out given her late brother\u2019s reputation as a chatterbox who courted the media, and her status as a largely unknown candidate seeking a six-year term.<\/p>\n \u201cSenator Darline Graham is different than Senator Lindsey Graham,\u201d said Taylor Reidy, a spokeswoman. \u201cShe\u2019s her own person, and she\u2019s certainly got different life experiences than her brother.\u201d<\/p>\n Since becoming a senator, Ms. Graham has sat for two interviews with Fox News, including a sit-down with the host Sean Hannity in which she announced the launch of her campaign.<\/p>\n On Monday, she took part in a debate with her Republican primary opponents in which she repeatedly highlighted that President Trump had endorsed her. But she offered few policy specifics<\/a>. She spoke with a South Carolina television station<\/a> on Tuesday, then released an op-ed on Wednesday<\/a> echoing points she had made elsewhere.<\/p>\n On Friday, on what was expected to be the final legislative day before her primary, Ms. Graham delivered a speech on the Senate floor about the sanctions bill. But after the bill passed, she declined to comment on it, shaking her head gently when asked by a reporter in the Senate basement.<\/p>\n Ms. Graham\u2019s opponents in the primary, including Representatives Russell Fry and Ralph Norman, have noted that Ms. Graham remains an unknown. They argue that because they have better-defined records, they have stronger qualifications for the job.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to elect somebody to be the United States senator for six years,\u201d Mr. Norman said in a separate debate on Tuesday night. \u201cIf you were hiring a doctor to operate on you for six years or a pilot to fly your plane for six years, you\u2019d want to know everything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Fry\u2019s campaign accused Ms. Graham of being insufficiently conservative, and of avoiding hard questions.<\/p>\n Ms. Graham\u2019s spokeswoman, Ms. Reidy, argued that Ms. Graham had \u201calready shown she is more conservative than Lindsey on some issues,\u201d including on abortion and the filibuster.<\/p>\n Still, among the easiest ways for members of Congress to stake out positions on the major issues of the day is for them to share their views with reporters who trail them on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n Mr. Graham wanted to be a central player in congressional debates, and over his political career, he honed a media-friendly persona. Through his eight years in the House and 23 years in the Senate, Mr. Graham seemed to view his many interviews as a way to elevate his profile and accumulate influence.<\/p>\n Before he died last month, Mr. Graham held key positions on committees that are currently at the center of fervid Senate debates, including the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general, a bill to avert a government shutdown at the end of September, and an effort to bypass Democrats and push through funding for the war in Iran and election restrictions.<\/p>\n Mr. Graham was outspoken on those issues when questioned by reporters. Ms. Graham, who has her brother\u2019s spot on those committees, has declined to discuss them with reporters at the Capitol.<\/p>\n Yet in the op-ed published on Wednesday, Ms. Graham blasted the silence of another public figure. She attacked Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who oversaw the country\u2019s response to Covid, for refusing to answer questions from a congressional committee.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Anthony Fauci should stop staring at the floor and answer the questions,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Hours later, she did the same.<\/p>\n Olivia Diaz contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Senator Lindsey Graham died last month, his sister, Darline Graham, essentially inherited his seat in Congress. With…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[52588,112506,119431,89518,11282,9,11,10,112505,119433,119434,5285,119432,17085,855,1065,119435,99277,1876],"class_list":["post-316840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-cotton","tag-darline-graham","tag-fry","tag-graham","tag-lindsey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nordone","tag-norman","tag-ralph-w-jr-1953","tag-republican-party","tag-russell-1985","tag-scott","tag-senate","tag-south-carolina","tag-timothy-eugene","tag-tom","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}