'I don't know much about her. Is she qualified? I don't really know to tell the truth...'
So said one of the first MAGA supporters in line as President Trump swooped in to rescue Darline Graham, the sinking Republican Senate candidate in
Hardly a ringing endorsement. But it was a sentiment echoed by others among the faithful after what has been a lackluster campaign.
The symbolism of Trump's rally being held near a large graveyard was hard to miss. Democratic protesters stood on the curb near headstones predicting Darline's doom. If the GOP loses overall control of the Senate, then this may well be where the dream died.
Lack of enthusiasm for Graham, sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, is palpable. Despite the presence of the President, for a second time in just eight days, the crowd took up less than half the Rock Hill Sports & Events Center in York County, an arena where the other most notable recent event was the Cornhole world championships.
'I liked her brother so I'm hoping she's a good senator, she's fairly new,' said Terry Causey, 79, who arrived at 5am after riding his Harley to get there. 'Trump likes her, so she's probably going to do a good job.'
Bo Simpson, 69, said: 'I loved her brother, and I love Darline. I don't trust the polls. The biggest danger is all the socialists and communists getting elected all over the country.'
Like numerous others in line, they were both from neighboring North Carolina so couldn't vote for Graham, and had come purely to see Trump.
President Trump dashed to South Carolina to boost Darline Graham amid polls showing her in a close race
Lindsey Graham had been cruising to a fifth term when he died of an aortic dissection on July 11.
Darline, former director of the state agency for the blind, received bipartisan support when she was appointed to serve out his term. But her decision to try to keep the seat for six more years on November 3, and Trump's endorsement of her, have rankled many Republicans.
Combined with economic woes it has led to the once unfathomable possibility of deep red South Carolina turning blue.
It's a state Trump won by 18 points in 2024, and it has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998. In 2022, Republican senator Tim Scott was re-elected by a massive 26 points.
On the eve of Trump's latest visit, a new poll threw a hand grenade into the already bubbling electoral waters.
The New York Times/Siena survey had Graham tied with Democrat Dr Annie Andrews on 48 percent. Andrews got 57 percent of independents to Graham's 37 percent. Andrews also captured seven percent of Republican voters, and 70 percent of under-30s.
Among Democrats there appears to be genuine enthusiasm for Andrews, a pediatrician and mother of three, who wants to impeach Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his views on vaccines, reverse Medicaid cuts and restore Obamacare subsidies.
By October 14, Andrews had raised $23.8 million to Graham's $1.2 million.
Dr Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate who President Trump called 'Tranny Annie' in an attack on her transgender positions
Whatever the eventual result, there are already two clear lessons for Republicans to learn from the race.
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First, candidate quality matters. Second, and perhaps more importantly, South Carolinians do not like being told what to do.
As Nancy Mace, a Republican who smashed Andrews in a congressional race in 2022, put it: 'People feel boondoggled. This was supposed to be a seat where Darline Graham was going to be appointed for six months. Its a f**ing train wreck.'
At the Trump rally, Randy Heine, 68, said: 'I just know if the Senate switches to Democrat control President Trump will be hindered. So I'm voting Republican over Democrat just for that reason. For me it's just keeping our party in charge.
'It's a hard time right now. I work in construction and my men are driving an hour and a half to get to things. A lot of gas, a lot of cost, but it's for a good reason.
'The problem with Iran is a very intimidating. They want to kill us.'
Trump made his second visit in eight days to deep red South Carolina
Unlike many in the audience who had come over the border from North Carolina, Graham was at least on home turf. She's a 'volleyball mom' who has watched her daughter play at the Rock Hill arena many times.
In a Southern drawl, she launched into Andrews, calling her 'plain bats**t crazy' and a gun grabber, and herself 'pretty damn conservative.'
'To me gun control is how steady you hold your weapon,' she said. Her biggest cheer came when she said liberals can 'kiss my a**.'
Andrews quickly responded on X: 'Is it bats**t to want cheaper gas and groceries?'
There is another reason for Graham's struggles. Many Republicans remain supportive of Ralph Norman, the congressman she defeated by five points in the Republican Senate primary after getting Trump's endorsement.
She won the nomination despite answering in a debate, when asked about Taiwan: 'National security is not my thing. I'm not that informed on national security.'
Trump's rally was held in Norman's congressional district but the representative was not invited, would not have gone anyway, and his name was not uttered once by any speaker. He appeared to have been airbrushed out of Republican politics by the President.
In a statement, Norman said: 'This election is about attempts to "force" a candidate on the voters of South Carolina. And, regardless of the outcome, it didn't have to be this way as the great people living in South Carolina deserve better! Elections have consequences.'
While the congressman went rogue, his son Warren has gone further, declaring he is 'leaning' toward Andrews, and even having a beer with her.
Annie Andrews was labeled 'bats**t crazy' by Darline Graham and responded: 'Is it bats**t to want cheaper gas and groceries?'
Republicans are desperate to seize the momentum back and have two main attack lines against Andrews. The first, which is taking up much of the oxygen in the race, centers on her positions on transgenderism.
In 2022 she opposed the Save Women's Sports Act in South Carolina, aimed at transgender athletes.
'This is shameful legislation that does nothing to protect or support women or children in South Carolina,' Andrews declared on X then. 'In fact, it is actively harmful. I will always support trans youth.'
She has also previously backed gender-affirming care for transgender young people.
At his rally President Trump lambasted the Democrat, repeatedly calling her 'Tranny Annie,' and at times just 'Tranny.'
He went on to call her a 'mutilizer, a rabid advocate for taxpayer-funded child sexual mutilation.'
Andrews is countering the attack with a TV advert showing her in medical scrubs, talking directly to the camera.
'I want you to hear me loud and clear,' she says. 'I don't support biological men playing women's sports, and I don't support and haven't ever performed gender surgery for minors.'
Protesters outside the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center in South Carolina as President Trump's motorcade arrived
A second point being hammered by Republicans is that, according to financial filings, Andrews earned more working for a gun control group than as a doctor.
'She's a vicious anti-gun radical,' said Trump. 'She wants to take your guns!'
He then asked everyone in the audience to raise their hand if they own a gun. Nearly every hand shot up.
Trump's intervention was aimed at driving Republican voters to the polls but, immediately afterwards, there was a suggestion it might have done so for the wrong reasons.
At York County's main polling station, located in a Holiday Inn, Brittany Dean, 33, appeared exasperated after watching clips of the rally on social media.
A Republican who voted for Trump in 2024, and who previously voted Libertarian, Trump's speech motivated her to go straight to the polls and vote Democrat.
'Seriously, you're calling someone a tranny? That's not even a nice word. And it's nonsense. That's what got me out to vote,' she told the Daily Mail.
'When someone has to drop to insults, calling people names, you've lost me. There's a level of decorum...'
She also objected to Trump declaring that Nicki Minaj had a 'beautiful a**' at a recent rally in Michigan.
'In the workplace, if someone talked about someone's a** like that, that's an HR violation,' she said.
She added: 'I voted for Trump in 2024 but this term he's basically been pretty terrible, including some of the stuff from this visit.
'We don't have to be loyal to parties, they can't just assume we're going to vote one way because we're in the South. Health insurance premiums are going through the roof, daycare, groceries, everybody's struggling.'
Anthony Mestas, 52, a services maintenance technician, who also backed Andrews, said he would have voted for Ralph Norman if he'd been the Republican nominee.
'The Republican Party tried to shove an unqualified candidate on the people of South Carolina. I didn't vote Republican for that reason,' he said.
'Nominating his (Lindsey Graham's) sister out of nowhere was not a good choice. I feel like there's a consensus that she was forced on us.'
Jim Ryan, 63, a local business owner and independent, said: 'I was OK with Lindsey's sister doing the rest of his term but she's just not qualified in any sense. She had a terrible performance in the debate and couldn't answer simple questions. This is a person in the US Senate, that scares me.
'It seems this all about loyalty. The economy's out of whack but she just supports Trump in everything. How can anybody support him in this crazy war? She's nothing but a lackey.'
President Trump said Annie Andrews would try to take away people's guns
Graham's defenders have stressed that she never actually wanted to run for office.
She said as much in an interview with conservative radio hosts this week, joking: 'When I get to heaven one day, I am just going to choke Lindsey.'
'I think she's dong a great job she was pretty much thrown into this, you know, and I support her,' Graham voter Megan Erickson, 66, a chiropractor, told the Daily Mail.
'I don't think that was what her intention was. She was asked to do it and she stepped up.'
Alan Wilson, the South Carolina Attorney General and Republican candidate for Governor, said: 'Do you think for a second she wants to be a US senator? No.
'She would trade it in a thousand times over to have her brother back. But she answered the call of our President.'
The poll placing Graham in a tie with Andrews is 'not an outlier,' according to election guru Nate Silver, but he predicts the Democrat will need 'basically everything to go right' to win.
One theory doing the rounds among political wonks in South Carolina is that there is a 'polling head-fake' going on.
In 2020, a series of polls put Democrat Jaime Harrison in a close race with Lindsey Graham. Smelling political blood, Democrats poured money into the state. But spooked Republicans flooded to the polls and gave Graham a 10-point win. Is that process unfolding again for his sister?
'Some are suggesting this is some "polling head-fake,"' declared Kevin Bishop, Lindsey Graham's former communications chief. 'I wish.'
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