ILLNESS, DEATH, AND TURMOIL CHANGE FACE OF GOP SENATE. One of the colder aspects of life in Washington politics is that the death of an important person often results, before much grieving is done, in a frenzy of speculation about who will get the unfortunate important person’s job. So it is with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), whose death set off an immediate “frenzy” of guessing about who would fill his post both in the short and long term.
Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) answered the first part of the question Monday afternoon, appointing the late senator’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve the remainder of Graham’s term, which lasts until Jan. 3, 2027. The second answer, on who will be the next full-term senator from South Carolina, will come after a special primary in August and the general election in November.
People are still processing Graham’s loss. Think back to some of the most momentous issues of the last several decades: the war in Iran, national security, judicial confirmations, budget battles, immigration, and political fights going back to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. Graham, who, when he died, was chairman of the Senate Budget Committee but also earlier chaired the Judiciary Committee, was in the middle of them all. He was the face of the Republican Party in the Senate on many issues, and for many years, he was close to the leader of the party: Donald Trump since 2016, and John McCain when McCain was the GOP nominee for president and for many years the party’s most prominent defense hawk.
Now Graham is gone. Whoever replaces him for the next full term, it’s guaranteed that person will not have the stature that Graham had. It took decades for Graham to gain the experience and build the relationships with local, national, and international leaders that made him Lindsey Graham. You can’t do that in a year or two.
But there is a larger story. Graham’s death comes at a wrenching moment for the Republican Party in the Senate. That is because, beyond Graham, a number of leaders who played key roles in the events of the last decade and beyond, who shaped the Senate as we know it today, are leaving, the result of illness, age, and the political turmoil of the Trump years. Lawmakers normally exit when they retire or lose reelection. This year, there’s more than that going on.
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) decline has been long and public, and at age 84, he is serving, sometimes from a hospital room, the last months of 42 years in the Senate. After rumors that he had died or that he was brain dead, this week, McConnell released a statement explaining that he “took a fall which landed me in the hospital” and also had a “mild case of pneumonia.”
McConnell also took care to list the things that didn’t happen. He didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. He didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. He doesn’t have any tumors or hemorrhages. But he said he’s now in a rehab center and doesn’t have the strength to return to the Senate floor, which reminded everyone of his frailty.
McConnell’s term ends in January 2027, and he will leave as one of the most effective Senate Republican leaders ever. If you are glad that then-new President Donald Trump was able to fill a Supreme Court seat in 2017, you should thank Mitch McConnell. He single-handedly kept the seat vacant until the 2016 election, which allowed Trump, rather than outgoing President Barack Obama, to fill it.
McConnell also fought a long and principled battle against McCain’s misguided efforts to pass a campaign finance reform bill. McConnell lost that battle when the Senate passed what became the McCain-Feingold Act. But McConnell ultimately won when the courts gutted the law, proving that McConnell had been right about its faults all along.
Another longtime Republican senator, John Cornyn of Texas, is also leaving at the end of this term. In his 24 years in the Senate, Cornyn built a reputation as an effective lawmaker and served as party whip, the second-highest position in the party. He scored an 85% lifetime rating from CPAC USA. In 2025, he voted with Trump 100% of the time. That, apparently, was not enough for the president, who felt that Cornyn had not supported him quickly enough in the 2024 presidential race. Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who then handily defeated Cornyn in the GOP primary.
Two-term Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is also being pushed out by Trump, having lost a primary to a Trump-backed opponent. Cassidy was the target of the president’s ire largely because on Feb. 13, 2021, a little more than three weeks after Trump left the presidency the first time, Cassidy voted to convict him in the Democratic-led impeachment. It was the first such vote ever taken after a president had left office, and Trump never forgave any of the senators who voted to convict him. There were seven of them — now, just Cassidy, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) remain in the Senate, although Cassidy is leaving and Collins is up for a possibly difficult reelection.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) is also leaving, by choice but also under pressure from Trump. Other GOP senators are leaving, too, more or less of their own accord. Retiring are Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Alan Armstrong (R-OK), who has served as the placekeeper for Markwayne Mullin. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is at the end of his term and is running for governor of Alabama, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is in the middle of her term, is running for governor of Tennessee and will leave the Senate if she wins.
Put it all together, and that is 10 Republicans guaranteed to leave the Senate before any votes are cast in November. If Blackburn wins, there will be 11. That’s a very large number from one party, more than any year in recent memory. And with the death of Graham, and the departures of McConnell and, to a lesser extent, Cornyn, lawmakers who guided the party for many years will no longer be on Capitol Hill. There’s a really big change coming, no matter who wins in November.