A top Senate ally of President Donald Trump is facing a primary challenge from the right.
Former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is running for the Senate in 2026, mounting a Republican primary challenge against longtime GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.
“Lindsey Graham has lost his way, and South Carolinians deserve a true conservative fighter to represent them in the United States Senate – 100% guaranteed,” Bauer, a wealthy developer and longtime Trump backer, charged in a statement early Wednesday, as he declared his candidacy.
Graham in February kicked off his campaign for a fifth six-year term representing the red state of South Carolina in the Senate.
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The senator was endorsed by Trump in March and this week he announced that veteran Republican consultant Chris LaCivita, who served as co-chair of the president’s 2024 campaign to win back the White House, was coming on board as his re-election campaign’s senior advisor.
Bauer – who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010 (in an election won by now-former governor, former ambassador to the U.N. and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley) and Congress in 2012 after serving eight years as the Palmetto State’s lieutenant governor – touted his Trump and MAGA credentials.
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“One of the first leaders in the country to endorse Trump in early 2016, André has been on the front lines of the America First movement, and has stood firmly with Trump on every issue,” his campaign touted in their email release. “André is a proven conservative fighter who will unapologetically stand with President Trump and put South Carolina first.”
Bauer stood alongside Trump at the South Carolina Statehouse in January 2023, as the former president announced his leadership team in the key early-voting primary state.
Trump, at the time, called Bauer “a friend of mine, somebody that could I think run for almost any office and win.”
Graham, along with Republican Gov. Howie McMaster of South Carolina, also stood alongside Trump at that event.
Eight years earlier, Graham was highly critical of Trump as he was part of a large field of rivals who ran against the real estate mogul and reality TV star for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
But Graham became a close friend and top ally to Trump during the president’s first term.
The senator has survived primary challenges from the right in his past re-election campaigns, and has been attacked for his more moderate stances on the issues of illegal immigration and climate change, as well as his advocacy for a muscular U.S. national security and foreign policy.
Ahead of last month’s U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Graham urged Trump to “go all-in” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Bauer, in his campaign launch, attacked the senator as “Globalist Lindsey Graham” and charged that he “has spent three decades sending your tax dollars overseas and funding regime change wars all over the world instead of helping South Carolinians. Lindsey voted over and over again for big spending and that has grown the national debt by trillions.”
Bauer also argued that “Graham has repeatedly called for amnesty for illegal immigrants.”
Graham, on Tuesday, hours ahead of Bauer’s launch, spotlighted his efforts to help Trump’s so-called “big beautiful” landmark spending and tax cut bill pass the Senate by a razor-thin one-vote margin.
“I just had a great phone call with President @realDonaldTrump about his excitement regarding the Senate’s passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill,” Graham wrote in a social media post.
And he highlighted that he’s “incredibly proud to have led the fight to move President Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ through the Senate Budget Committee and onto full passage by the United States Senate.”
Graham re-election campaign spokeswoman Abby Zilch also took aim at Bauer.
“Andre Bauer has spent his career chasing titles to feed his ego, running for five different offices and even trying to leverage Senator Graham and the White House for an ambassadorship. When that failed, he launched his sixth campaign – proving once again, this is all about Making Andre Great Again,” Zilch claimed in a statement.
Republicans dominate statewide elections in South Carolina and the winner of next year’s GOP Senate primary will be considered the clear frontrunner in the 2026 general election.