A former Republican leader in one of the GOP's most storied strongholds is laying a stunning defeat at the feet of one man.
Nathan Leupp, a Bob Jones University alumnus and former chair of the Greenville County Republican Party in South Carolina, told The Wall Street Journal in a report published Wednesday that President Donald Trump bears much of the blame after Democrat Annie Andrews captured the Senate seat Lindsey Graham held for more than two decades. Andrews not only won statewide but also carried Greenville County, a conservative bastion Trump won by 22 points in 2024.
"I fully believe that South Carolina would have been the only red wall for that blue wave except for Lindsey Graham's passing and President Trump personally punching holes through our red wall by selecting our nominee," Leupp said.
Graham died in July, and Trump threw his weight behind the late senator's sister, Darline Graham, a first-time candidate The Journal described as untested and hesitant. According to the report, the president's anointing rubbed many independent-minded South Carolinians the wrong way.
The upheaval scrambled the calendar too. After a second primary in August, Graham beat Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) in a runoff two weeks later and limped into the general election broke. Andrews went on to outraise her $24 million to $2 million while the county GOP stayed mired in infighting between MAGA loyalists and the party's old guard.
Some conservatives rejected Trump's claim that he was not on the ballot. Steve Pettit, a former Bob Jones University president who now leads the socially conservative Palmetto Family Council, called the result "really a response to the president." Randy Page, a longtime South Carolina political operative, put it more bluntly.
"Yes, he was," Page insisted.
Page added that Trump's three campaign stops for Graham were a red flag in themselves.
"Any time a Republican president is coming to South Carolina during a general election, it means one thing," he said. "You're losing."
Former Republican Gov. David Beasley, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020 as head of the United Nations World Food Program, cut a joint ad backing Andrews with Jim Hodges, the Democrat who unseated him in 1998. Beasley told The Journal he was outraged when Trump called Andrews "Annie Trannie" and no longer considers himself a Republican.
"That party we built?" Beasley said. "That party doesn't exist anymore."