Lindsey Graham stands firm behind Amy Coney Barrett - but back home his bid for re-election is on shaky ground

‘Lindsey Graham flip flops. You’ve gotta stick to your guns, man,’ Harrison voter says of senator’s handling of Supreme Court pick

As Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday shepherded Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination onto the Senate floor for a momentous vote next week, voters back in his home state of South Carolina were casting ballots that’ll determine whether the Barrett nomination is his last act as their senator.

Here in balmy Charleston, the Palmetto State’s coastal metropolis of more than 400,000 residents, the three-term Republican senator’s recent moves on the Supreme Court have taken centre stage, another issue that has polarised voters in an increasingly competitive election.

Lamont Brown, 46, a longshoreman on the Charleston docks for 27 years, accused Mr Graham on Thursday of being a “flip-flopper” on everything from Ms Barrett’s nomination to his about-face embracing Donald Trump, whom the senator called “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” during the Republican presidential primaries in 2016.

“Lindsey Graham flip flops. You’ve gotta stick to your guns, man,” Mr Brown told The Independent outside the North Charleston Coliseum on Thursday, one of four early in-person voting locations in Charleston County that have frequently seen hours-long lines since polls opened on 5 October.

Mr Brown said he cast his vote for Mr Graham’s Democratic challenger, Jaime Harrison, the former state party chairman who has improbably pulled even with the senator in deep-red South Carolina through a well-funded campaign relentlessly attacking Mr Graham as a Donald Trump bootlicker.

Mr Brown accused Ms Barrett of “trying to suppress the vote,” pointing to the nominee’s argument in a 2019 federal appeals court dissenting opinion where she wrote that convicted felons, once they have served out their prison sentences, should retain their second-amendment right to own a gun — but not necessarily their right to vote.

“So if you’ve served your time, you can be eligible for gun rights, but not to vote? That’s not right. And Lindsey Graham is enabling this,” Mr Brown said.

But Mr Graham has made his support for Ms Barrett’s nomination to the high court the focal point of his campaign as he clings to his political life.

Sticking up out of the grass from the medians at what feels like every busy intersection in Charleston are dozens of “Lindsey Graham for US Senate” signs with the hashtag “#FillTheSeat” in bold lettering underneath.

Mr Graham has said repeatedly since Mr Trump pegged Ms Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that he has “never been more proud” to support a Supreme Court nominee.

“This is why we all run [for office],” Mr Graham said on Thursday at a Judiciary Committee hearing Washington as he pushed through Ms Barrett’s nomination for consideration before the full Senate.

“It’s moments like this that make everything you go through matter,” he said.

Conservative voters in Charleston who spoke to The Independent on Thursday by and large said they were sticking with the Republican senator seeking his fourth term as a shield against “socialism.”

At the South Carolina Senate debate on 3 October, Mr Graham framed the race as a choice between “capitalism versus socialism,” “conservative judges versus liberal judges,” and “law and order versus chaos.”

Tim and Diane Keisler, pharmacists in their 50s who have lived in Charleston for 30 years, said they buy Mr Graham’s claim that Mr Harrison and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden are Trojan horses for a socialist agenda from left-wing radicals overtaking Washington Democrats.

“This person-over-party thing is total bulls**t,” Mr Keisler said of Mr Harrison’s insistence he will vote with an independent mind.

“You can say that all you want during a campaign, but when you go [to DC], you’re pressured to vote with your party,” said Mr Keisler, who was wearing a University of South Carolina Gamecocks ball cap, blue flower-pattern swim trunks, and flip flops.

Asked what motivated him to head to the polls early, Mr Keisler didn’t hesitate to offer a quick, four-word answer: “I don’t like socialism.”

After raising a record $57m in the crucial three-month stretch from July through September, Mr Harrison finds himself virtually tied in the polls with Mr Graham in a race rated either Tossup or Tilts Republican by every major US elections handicapper.

A new online poll on Thursday from Morning Consult showed Mr Harrison leading Mr Graham 47-45 per cent, an eight-point swing from earlier this month, when the same poll found Mr Graham with a 6 percentage point lead.

A New York Times/Siena survey from last week pegged Mr Graham 6 points ahead of Mr Harrison.

The razor thin polling margins and both candidates’ prodigious fundraising hauls (Mr Graham raised $28m in the third quarter) have propelled the race into the national spotlight as Democrats look to reclaim a Senate majority by picking up a net of four seats or three seats plus the presidency.

Meanwhile, the candidates have continued to hurl broadsides against each other on the airwaves and on digital platforms in South Carolina.

Pull up a YouTube video without ad-blocker in the Charleston area and it’s very likely to be one of the candidate’s commercials.

Mr Graham, the incumbent, is on the defense.

“None of what they’re saying about Lindsey is true,” former South Carolina Governor and US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says in a new spot for Mr Graham. “There are radical differences” between the two candidates, Ms Haley says.

Mr Harrison is running a series of new ads accusing the senator of flip-flopping about whether he would seat a Supreme Court nominee during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

His surrogates in the state are pushing the same message with a laser focus, telling The Independent in multiple conversations this week that the dissonance between Mr Graham’s past statements and his current actions has helped them make gains among two key subsets of voters in the state: independent white voters who have voted for Mr Graham in the past, and liberal-leaning black voters who have sat out previous elections.

“He just flip flops over and over again, and South Carolinians are tired of it. ... His supporters are like, ‘You know what? I can't anymore,’” said Democratic strategist Clay Middleton, a longtime aide to House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement of Mr Biden in the South Carolina presidential primary helped swing that race in the former vice president’s favour.