Do we like Annie Andrews?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Years of real public-health work and a historic win, set against a reversal on trans issues that makes her record mixed.
Annie Andrews was born in Kentucky and raised in Indiana. She studied at Dayton and Cincinnati, then moved to Charleston in 2009 to work as a pediatrician at the Medical University of South Carolina. She was later promoted to professor of pediatrics there.
Politics came through guns. The 2018 Parkland shooting pushed her to join Moms Demand Action, and her clinical research on preventing gun injuries fed straight into her advocacy for safe storage. She became the Democratic nominee for South Carolina's 1st District in 2022, and in 2026 she took on a Senate seat Lindsey Graham had held for decades.
Her platform is bread-and-butter: affordable health care, Medicaid and Medicare, restoring Roe v. Wade, and banning corporate PAC money. She told Fox Carolina that the state's Heartbeat Law endangers women's lives. Her pitch is that she would put South Carolina first and cast hard votes, even against her own party.
The other big fight is health. She has pledged to push for the impeachment of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his anti-vaccine record. That's a pediatrician standing up for public health, which fits the house rules nicely.
On election night she won about 50.6 per cent to Graham's 47.2, according to TIME. NPR and others report that she is the first woman South Carolina has sent to the Senate. She said the state had shown the nation it won't be moved by vitriol and name-calling.
Her record in office doesn't exist yet, so this is a read on her campaign and her day job. The day job is strong: years caring for kids and fighting gun injuries. The trans-rights wobble keeps her out of the top bracket, and we'll be watching how she votes.