ROCK HILL, S.C. — With the U.S. Senate election five days away, both campaigns have spent the week in Rock Hill, the hometown of a Republican whose name is not on the ballot: U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman.
Norman lost the GOP Senate runoff to Sen. Darline Graham by 5 points after President Donald Trump endorsed her. He has said he will vote for Graham but has not campaigned for her, and an online push is urging Republicans to write in his name on Nov. 3.
How big that effort is remains unclear. In a Citadel survey out Tuesday, Norman drew 2% as a planned write-in among registered voters across the state and twice that, 4%, among those in the Rock Hill TV market. Graham was ahead of Democrat Annie Andrews there, 44% to 37%, and one in 10 voters had not decided. History suggests write-ins stay small: about 2,300 of 2.5 million South Carolina Senate voters wrote in a name in 2020.
Statewide, a Siena College poll published Oct. 28 showed a virtual dead heat. By the middle of this month the GOP had poured $20 million into the contest. Trump’s Thursday stop in Rock Hill, at the city’s Sports and Event Center, was his third South Carolina visit since August.
Andrews held her own Rock Hill rally Wednesday evening, where she cited the backing of two ex-governors from opposite parties, Republican David Beasley and Democrat Jim Hodges. Voters in Norman’s House district returned him to Congress in 2024 by a wide margin, 63.51% to the field.
Section: More Rock Hill SC politics news
Filed under: Rock Hill SC Politics News
