Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) Democratic challenger, Jaime Harrison, announced on Wednesday that his campaign raised $150,000 following remarks that Graham made defending President Donald Trump for comparing the ongoing impeachment inquiry against him to a lynching.
“Y’all are *crushing* it! We have raised $150k in the past 24-hours, and are so ready to DEFEAT Lindsey Graham,” Harrison wrote on Twitter. “We’ve set a goal of hitting $200k by midnight tonight to keep this momentum going.”
“Our campaign is powered by everyday people who know that Lindsey Graham doesn’t represent them and can’t be trusted,” Zack Carroll, Harrison’s campaign manager, added in a statement. “In the hours after Graham compared investigating political corruption to a ‘lynching,’ contributions to support Jaime started pouring in. South Carolinians believe in Jaime’s promise to bring hope and character back to our politics — and they’re rejecting Lindsey Graham.”
Trump, as well as many Republicans, have become increasingly frustrated with the shifting impeachment investigation, which Democrats have failed to even bring to the House floor for a formal vote, leaving an actual impeachment inquiry open-ended. The president, however, ignited a firestorm on Tuesday after airing his dissatisfaction by comparing House Democrats’ handling of the impeachment investigation to a lynching.
“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” Trump said at the time. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching. But we will WIN!”
The comparison drew an immediate backlash from the left side of the aisle, with Democratic leadership even demanding an apology. While many Republicans distanced themselves from the comments, Graham defended the remarks.
“This is a lynching in every sense. This is un-American,” Graham told reporters. “I have never seen a situation in my lifetime as a lawyer where somebody is accused of a major misconduct who cannot confront the accuser, call witnesses on their behalf and have the discussion in the light of day so the public can judge.”
Harrison, who served as the first black chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, criticized Graham for ignoring South Carolina’s history of lynching in order to further defend the president.
“For three generations in South Carolina, we have understood the evil history of lynching in our state,” Harrison said in a statement. “We have all — Democrats, Republicans, Independents — agreed it will not define who we are as South Carolinians anymore.”
“We put the shadow of lynching behind us, but now Lindsey Graham is casting that shadow across South Carolina and our nation to defend Donald Trump,” he continued. “I don’t know why Sen. Graham has changed and now spits on the values we hold dear as South Carolinians.”
Harrison subsequently invited the South Carolina senator to accompany him to the ground-breaking of the International African-American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as to visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which honors more than 4,000 people who were lynched in America.