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Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister, says she’ll run for full Senate term

▶ Watch Video: Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline, announces bid for full Senate term in South Carolina

Washington — Sen. Darline Graham, who is serving out the remainder of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s term in the Senate, said Monday that she will seek a full term for the South Carolina seat her brother held for more than two decades. 

“I’ve made a decision,” Graham told Fox News. “I’m in.”

The late senator, who died on July 11, had secured the GOP nomination in June for what would have been his fifth term representing South Carolina. With his death, the Republican candidate in the South Carolina Senate race will be determined by a special primary election. Republicans seeking the Senate seat may file between July 21 and July 28, before an Aug. 11 primary to decide who will take on Democrat Annie Andrews in November.

Graham, 62, was sworn in last week, after South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to serve out the remainder of her brother’s term, which runs through early January. Graham, who doesn’t have a background in elected office, had a career in disabilities services and most recently served as commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind. 

She said upon accepting the appointment that finishing her brother’s term “is what Lindsey would have wanted,” noting that she planned to “honor him in this way.”

Darline Graham sworn in as senator
Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is ceremonially sworn in by President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on July 14, 2026, as her husband Larry Nordone holds the Bible. 

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

President Trump publicly encouraged Graham to run for a six-year term, writing in a post on Truth Social after meeting with her at the White House last week that she would have his “Complete and Total Endorsement.”

“I hope Darline does this, in that there would be nobody better to honor the legacy of her beloved brother, Lindsey,” Mr. Trump said. 

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Graham said, “I have been praying a lot, talking to my family.”

“I know I’m a hard worker. I learned that from Lindsey,” she said. “I feel like I can do it. I feel an inner peace about it. Will it be difficult? Yes. Absolutely.”

The president’s endorsement hasn’t stopped other Republicans from announcing their intention to run for the six-year term. Rep. Ralph Norman, who’s represented South Carolina in the House since 2017, announced a bid on Saturday. And Rep. Russell Fry, who was elected to the House in 2022, announced his candidacy on Monday. 

If no candidate secures a majority of the vote in the special primary election, a runoff will be held on Aug. 25.

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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