Lindsey Graham Suddenly Died Saturday at 71, Days After Visiting Ukraine and Meeting with Zelensky
He was campaigning for a fifth Senate term just weeks ago, fending off five challengers to win his primary. His office called the illness that took him “brief and sudden.”
Graham’s office announced early Sunday that he’d died the evening before of a “brief and sudden” illness, giving no cause of death. His 71st birthday had been Thursday.
Emergency responders were called to Graham’s Capitol Hill home around 8:30 p.m. Saturday for a man suffering chest pains, according to police scanner audio obtained by The Washington Post. Roughly 25 minutes later, responders reported CPR in progress and cardiac arrest. A neighbor photographed an older man being wheeled out on a stretcher around 9:30 p.m. and taken to George Washington University Hospital.
He’d been set to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, back from a trip to Ukraine where he toured a drone factory and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky. In Kyiv on Friday, Graham told reporters a bipartisan group of senators had reached a deal with the White House on new sanctions against Russia. Zelensky wrote that he was “deeply saddened,” calling Graham “a true defender of freedom.”
The South Carolina Republican spent more than two decades in the Senate and became one of Trump’s closest allies, though he once branded him a “demagogue” and told a 2015 CNN interview to “tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” Trump called him “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known.” Graham ran his own presidential campaign in 2015, promising a “rotating first lady” as a never-married candidate, and dropped out before any votes were cast.
As Judiciary Committee chairman, Graham oversaw the confirmation of more than 200 federal judges, including Amy Coney Barrett three weeks before the 2020 election. At the time of his death he led the Budget Committee and an appropriations subcommittee on foreign policy spending.
His death narrows a 53-47 Republican Senate majority and leaves the party a senior vote short as Mitch McConnell remains hospitalized for undisclosed reasons. Under South Carolina law, Governor Henry McMaster can name a temporary replacement, with an election for a full-term successor set for November. Businessman Mark Lynch, who took 29 percent to Graham’s 57 in last month’s primary, is among the possible successors.
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