By admin 
No matter who wins the U.S. Senate race in November, South Carolina voters are sending an outsider to represent them in Washington, D.C. It’s a label candidates play up while simultaneously trying to reassure voters they can accomplish their priorities in Congress.
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Both Democratic nominee Annie Andrews and GOP U.S. Sen. Darline Graham have touted not being politicians in their bids for the U.S. Senate, but they also still have political connections that make them serious candidates.
“I am a pediatrician,” Andrews told supporters in Columbia Sept. 2. “I’ve worked in children’s hospitals my entire 20-year career. 15 of those years were serving South Carolina’s sick and injured children at the children’s hospital down in Charleston. I’m also a mom of three public school kids down in Charleston County. I am a public servant. I am not, nor do I ever want to be, a career politician.”
“Some critics have said I can’t run because I’m not a politician. You know what I say? Guilty as charged. I’m not a politician, but you know who else wasn’t a politician? Donald Trump,” said Graham, the sister of South Carolina’s late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, in Anderson County on Aug. 17
Neither candidate has been elected to political office before. Both had jobs out of the public eye for a majority of their careers.
“Both Andrews and Graham can credibly claim that they are outsiders,” said Kirk Randazzo, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina.
Identifying as an outsider makes sense as many voters dislike “career politicians” and Congress as an institution, Randazzo said. 79% of the public disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, according to a Gallup poll from earlier this month.
Third-party candidates in the U.S. Senate race include Kasie Whitener, a Libertarian, and Constitution Party nominee Mark Hackett. Whitener said she has never held elected office either and sees the candidates’ inexperience as an opportunity for her as a third party candidate.
“Any one of the three of us that wins will be a rookie in that space, and I think that creates more of a level playing field,” Whitener said in an interview.
Andrews, Graham have political ties
Andrews, a pediatrician, often appears in medical settings in campaign ads. While she has worked in the hospitals and has never held elected office before, she isn’t a total political newcomer.
Andrews ran for U.S. House in 2022 against Nancy Mace. She lost by almost 14 points. Following the general election, the pediatrician started an organization focused on policies benefiting children and an affiliated political action committee in 2023, according to media reports.
In April 2023, Roll Call reported Andrews aimed to raise between $5 million to $10 million for candidates with “Their Future PAC.” The PAC was terminated about two years later, around the time Andrews announced her U.S. Senate campaign. The PAC raised more than $255,000 and gave to a handful of 2024 contestants, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Andrews worked as a board certified pediatrician at the Medical University of South Carolina from 2009-2023, according to her campaign. She then worked at the Children’s National hospital until June 2026.
Andrews earned $69,830 from Children’s National in Washington, D.C., in 2025 and early 2026, according to her Senate ethics forms. She has also been paid for several speaking engagements and received $53,000 in two 2025 installments from Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, an advocacy group, according to the ethics form.
At Everytown for Gun Safety, Andrews helped develop a program to train medical students on speaking with families about safe firearm storage, with the aim of preventing school shootings, unintentional shootings and suicide, according to her campaign.
She announced her campaign for U.S. Senate in May 2025.
This is Graham’s first time running for an elected office, but she often campaigned with her late brother, Lindsey Graham. Graham and her family stood with Lindsey Graham after he filed his re-election paperwork in March earlier this year and appeared in campaign ads for him. She also introduced the late senator when he announced a run for president in 2015.
Two days after Lindsey Graham’s sudden death, Darline Graham was appointed by the governor to finish out her brother’s term. She has served in the U.S. Senate since mid-July.
When Graham decided to run for a full term to the U.S. Senate, many of her brother’s office and campaign staff followed her. A new spokesperson for the campaign also worked for Lindsey Graham’s 2020 bid for the U.S. Senate.
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Several of the super PACs supporting Lindsey Graham’s campaign backed her in the special primary, including Security is Strength and Palmetto Action. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, coordinated spending with her campaign ahead of the primary.
Before her appointment to the U.S. Senate, Graham led the state Commission for the Blind since 2019, where she earned $160,080 after a June pay raise. The agency helps blind and low vision South Carolinians build skills and find employment.
The governor also appointed Graham to the State Workforce Development Board, and she was president-elect of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind, according to a news release.
Both candidates’ participation in the U.S. Senate race was also welcomed by some party leaders. South Carolina Democratic Party chair Christale Spain said she was “delighted” when Andrews told her she would consider running for the seat. Andrews easily won the Democratic primary outright in June.
Graham frequently says she ran for U.S. Senate at the request of President Donald Trump days after her brother died. Trump put his political clout and financial weight behind Graham’s primary run. She often says she will support the president’s positions on a variety of issues, including the war in Iran.
“I’m in the Oval Office meeting with the president, who asked me to run for six years,” Graham said Sept. 21. “That was a bit of a surprise. But how do you say no to that? So I walked out of the Oval Office agreeing to run for six years.”
Building credibility
While voters may want a fresh voice, they also need to trust their chosen representative is credible, Randazzo said. And both Graham and Andrews have tried to paint themselves as credible and effective policymakers, even without a long track record in office.
A successful outsider is someone with the right combination of name recognition and credibility and ability to communicate they are not a “career politician,” a label some voters distrust, Randazzo said.
“They can talk up the outsider status, that they’re not a career politician, but still hold name recognition in such a way that people will get excited about their candidacy and will turn out to vote for them,” Randazzo said.
Graham’s political positions were unknown to the public when she was first appointed to the U.S. Senate. Throughout the campaign, Graham has flexed her votes and support for bills in her short time in Congress, including the passage of a sanctions bill named for Lindsey Graham.
While campaigning in a Lexington County Lizard’s Thicket, Graham said she was qualified for the U.S. Senate because of her experience working in state government as the leader of the Commission for the Blind.
“People have said I don’t have any experience. Well, that’s not true,” Graham said. “For the past seven years, I’ve led a state agency with a $90 million budget and 130 employees. I turned it from a struggling organization into a national model.”
The day after Graham became the Republican nominee, Andrews criticized her as ”just another typical politician” and called her unqualified for the job.
“I think Darline Graham and I have something in common, which is we’re both political outsiders, and inherently I think that’s a good thing,” Andrews said in an Aug. 26 interview. “But you know what we’ve seen from Darline over the past few weeks is that she’s just unprepared for this moment, and being new to politics is not an excuse to be unprepared.”
Andrews also spent the weeks following the special primary runoff touting policy plans focused on affordability, tax reform and the national debt. Randazzo said sharing specific policy solutions for issues is a good way for candidates to establish credibility.
“I think that’s something that Andrews has been doing for the last several months,” Randazzo said. “Graham’s initial messaging was essentially: Well, I’m going to support whatever President Trump wants to do. And I think she’s got a little bit more work in order to establish herself as an independent thinker, an independently minded individual that has her own solutions for the challenges facing folks in South Carolina.”
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