Darline Graham, the sister of the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham, was sworn in to fill his Senate seat on Tuesday, just three days after his sudden death.<\/p>\n
Graham was appointed by Henry McMaster, South Carolina\u2019s governor, to fill the remainder of her brother\u2019s current term.<\/p>\n
Graham arrived in the Senate chamber, accompanied by Republican senators Tim Scott, who became the senior senator from South Carolina after her brother\u2019s death, and Katie Britt of Alabama. Senator Chuck Grassley administered the oath of office \u2013 Graham placed her hand on a bible and pledged to \u201csupport and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic\u201d. When she finished, the chamber erupted in extended applause.<\/p>\n
Upon her swearing in, Graham made history as the first woman to represent South Carolina in the Senate.<\/p>\n
Lindsey died on Saturday night<\/a>, aged 71. With the backing of Donald Trump, Darline was swiftly appointed<\/a> to serve the remaining months of his Senate term, which ends on 3 January.<\/p>\n \u201cLindsey took care of his little sister in years long departed. It\u2019s my honor to ask his little sister, Darline Graham, to finish his work for him now,\u201d the Republican governor said at a press conference convened at South Carolina\u2019s state capital in Columbia on Monday.<\/p>\n In brief remarks on Monday, Graham said it was an \u201chonor\u201d to stand in as her brother\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n \u201cI promise to work hard over the next several months to support the president and carry forward the efforts of my brother on behalf of the citizens of South Carolina and the United States,\u201d she said. \u201cI think this is what Lindsey would have wanted, and I plan to honor him in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time of his death, Graham was seeking a fifth Senate term, having won the Republican nomination only last month.The state GOP will hold a separate special<\/a> election on 11 August to choose a new Senate nominee, who will face off against Democrat Annie Andrews in the November midterms.<\/p>\n Darline has never held public office, but was a steady presence at her brother\u2019s side, supporting his political career as his national profile grew. Since 2019, she has served as commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, according to McMaster\u2019s office<\/a>. Before that, she held positions at Clemson University and in two South Carolina state agencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darline Graham, the sister of the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham, was sworn in to fill his Senate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-763028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}