Do we like Lindsey Graham?
Our score: 3 out of 10. Decades of votes against marriage equality and LGBTQ+ protections, set against real military service and a bipartisan push on Ukraine.
Graham was born in 1955 in Central, South Carolina. He spent six years as an active-duty Air Force lawyer and retired in 2015 as a colonel after more than three decades in uniform. He went to the US House in 1995, then took Strom Thurmond's Senate seat and won three more terms. He was one of the defence-hawk “three amigos” with John McCain and Joe Lieberman.
The big plot twist was Trump. In 2015 Graham called him “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot”, then became one of his staunchest advocates, citing a sense of patriotic duty. He chaired Judiciary through much of Trump's first term, overseeing Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation, and later chaired Budget and shepherded the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In 2018 he told the Kavanaugh hearing that Democrats had run “the most unethical sham”.
The Georgia stoush is the stain on the Trump years. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Graham rang after the 2020 election and asked whether he could reject certain absentee ballots, and Raffensperger took that as a suggestion to toss legal votes. Graham called that idea “ridiculous”. He fought the subpoena, lost, and sat two hours before the special grand jury, where courts barred questions about protected legislative activity.
On LGBTQ+ rights the record is plain and it is the main reason he fails our harm test. He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, against repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 2010, against ENDA in 2013 and against the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. After Obergefell he said, “I am a proud defender of traditional marriage.” In 2022 he told CNN he thought “states should decide the issue of marriage”. We found nothing on his own words about trans people, so this rests on those votes and statements.
On race he cop a lot of heat. In a 2020 debate against his Democratic challenger he said a young African American or immigrant could go anywhere in South Carolina if they were conservative, not liberal, and critics hit back hard. In 2021 he stood by saying the US is “not a racist country”, while adding that Jim Crow was systemic racism and urging constituents to vote. He was arguing against broad claims, but the 2020 line landed badly.
The good stuff is real. He served in uniform for over three decades. His last big project was a Russia sanctions bill with Democrat Richard Blumenthal, built to press Moscow to end its war on Ukraine, which drew 85 cosponsors. He called it “a sledgehammer available to President Trump to end this war”. It was later named after him.