'No President Has Ever Worked So Hard on a Midterm': Trump Speaks for More Than an Hour in Rock Hill to Pull His Party Behind Graham
More than 1,000 people heard the president's third South Carolina stop of the season - in the heart of the district Ralph Norman won against Graham in the primary, where a write-in campaign for Norman is still circulating.
ROCK HILL, S.C. - President Donald Trump urged a crowd of over 1,000 people on Thursday to vote for U.S. Sen. Darline Graham in her race against Democrat Annie Andrews, speaking for over an hour at the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center in his third visit to South Carolina this election season. Trump took the stage about 1:15 p.m. "No president has ever worked so hard on a midterm," he said, adding, of a voice he conceded was strained: "My voice is a little bit more raspy than it was two weeks ago. We just power through it."
The geography was the message. The president has focused his South Carolina visits on three regions Graham lost in either the August 11 special GOP primary or the August 25 runoff to U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman - and Norman won the Rock Hill area, where he grew up and which sits in the district he represents. A social media campaign urging a write-in vote for Norman for the Senate has emerged since his loss, and in an op-ed column Norman's son Warren wrote that he will not support Graham and will vote for Andrews despite being a lifelong Republican.
The party's closers worked the unity argument in plain terms. Attorney General Alan Wilson, the Republican nominee for governor, said the time for in-fighting, or "family arguments," is done after primary season. "Not voting for Darline Graham isn't just not voting for Darline Graham," Wilson said. "You are saying indirectly that you're okay with Chuck Schumer being the majority leader of the United States Senate." Sen. Tim Scott told the crowd the midterms will determine control of the Senate and House and with it Trump's ability to enact his agenda: "We must protect the America we love. That means voting Republican from the top of the ticket all the way down to the bottom."
Trump used the speech to criticize Andrews - he said she supports hormone treatments and gender-affirming surgeries for minors, a claim Andrews has refuted, and that she wants to take away people's guns, despite Andrews saying on the campaign trail that she supports the Second Amendment. "Darline Graham has devoted her entire life to the people of the state, and now she's running to save you from a radical left lunatic," Trump said. Graham told the crowd that staying home or voting for anyone other than the Republican nominee is a vote for the Democrats. Fox News updated its forecast of the race on October 29, shifting it from a Republican lean to a toss-up after the New York Times/Siena poll tied the race at 48-48. South Carolina early voting runs through October 31; polls on Election Day, November 3, are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
