Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) bowed out of the race for the White House Monday morning, telling supporters he is suspending his campaign, but not his “desire to help the country.”
Watch:
Graham, who struggled to reach even 1 percent in the polls, even in his own home state of South Carolina, still stood out as a moderate voice as his party drifted further to the right. He has been one of the only Republican candidates this year to repeatedly raise climate change as a serious concern, publicly chastising his rivals who “deny the science,” telling them: “You’re making a mistake.”
Graham also pleaded with his party to denounce the rise in hate speech and insinuations against Muslims, saying at a recent debate that remarks by GOP frontrunner Donald Trump do not represent the general U.S. attitude. “To all of our Muslim friends throughout the world, like the King of Jordan and the President of Egypt, I am sorry. He does not represent us,” Graham said. Then, turning to his debate rivals Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, who had made sweeping comments connecting Islam and terrorism, he scolded them: “Leave the faith alone, go after the radicals.”
And unlike Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Graham did not disavow his past work in the Senate pushing for comprehensive immigration reform. Throughout his campaign, he continued to call for a path to citizenship for undocumented people who have made a life in the U.S., and warned that the hard-line, pro-deportation stances of his fellow candidates would alienate voters of color and cost Republicans the White House.
The long-serving senator, who survived a Tea Party challenge in 2014, also warned that his party’s increasingly extreme stances on reproductive rights — such as a call for a ban on all abortions even in cases of rape or incest — would alienate women voters and spell electoral doom for the GOP.
In a race where even sons of privilege like Donald Trump and Jeb Bush tried to tell voters they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, Graham actually did so — working in a pool hall from a young age, losing his parents, joining the Air Force, and financially supporting his sister and himself.
But lest he be remembered as a progressive hero, Graham was militarily hawkish even by his party’s current standard, promising in speeches to wage war in multiple countries if elected president.
In a moment weird even by the extremely weird standards of this year’s presidential election, Graham also waged war on his own cell phone after Donald Trump released his personal number to the world.
We’ll miss you, Lindsey Graham.