South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Annie Andrews spoke with Katie Couric about her competition following the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Andrews had been set to challenge the incumbent, but following his death over the weekend, the Republican Party will have to nominate a new candidate to face her in the November general election.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Sen. Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to finish his Senate term on Monday. Andrews said the decision allowed both the governor and President Donald Trump to avoid endorsing a new Republican candidate for the seat.
“I think he did this strategically because he wasn’t ready to pick — Trump nor McMaster — weren’t ready to pick who they want to anoint to be the Republican nominee and run against me in November,” she said in an interview with Couric. “By picking a non-political person, a family member, they sort of avoided that, and now Republicans will have the opportunity to file to run for the open seat.”
Graham was elected to the Senate in 2002 and reelected in 2008, 2014 and 2020. He won the Republican nomination for a fifth term in June 2026 but died before the general election.
Republican hopefuls will be able to file to run for the open seat beginning Tuesday, July 21, with filings closing July 28. The pediatrician and first-time politician told Couric that it is very rare for a Senate seat to open up in South Carolina, so it is expected to be a competitive race.
When asked whether there was a candidate she would want to run against, Andrews brought up her history with Rep. Nancy Mace.
“You probably remember I have a history with uh Nancy Mace and of course she likes to make news cycles about herself, so she has been talking since Sunday about getting in this race,” she said. “I think that would be a really interesting rematch.”
Mace falsely accused the pediatrician of child abuse, leading her to take unpaid leave from her job at a children’s hospital in the state. The allegations were made in the wake of claims that Andrews supported “gender-affirming therapy and surgery on young kids” which Mace referred to as “child abuse.”
Andrews told Couric she would not be concerned about facing Mace in a race because Mace ran for governor of South Carolina and finished fifth in the Republican primary.
“I don’t think she really has a chance to be the nominee, but I’m quite certain she will run,” she said.
The Democratic nominee also stated that the Republican nominee would likely be “another very far-right extremist freedom caucus type,” one that she believes she would have a chance to beat.
“I feel very confident in my ability to beat a candidate like that because our polling already showed that one in five non-MAGA Republicans are already planning to vote for me,” she said.
“The way politics are happening down here in South Carolina, what the Republican party has become in South Carolina is a nice centrist Republican like say a Nikki Haley or even a Mark Sanford could never win a Republican primary in South Carolina because the state party has been drawn so far to the extreme right,” she added.
You can watch the full interview in the video above.
