Trump Ally Graham faces the main challenge of the Senate of Andre Bauer

A first ally of President Donald Trump’s Senate faces a main challenge on the right.

The former Lieutenant-Governor of South Carolina Andre Bauer presented himself in the Senate in 2026, amounting to a republican primary challenge against the long-standing senator of the Gop Lindsey Graham.

“Lindsey Graham has lost his way, and the South Carolinians deserve a real conservative fighter to represent them in the US Senate – 100% guaranteed,” a rich developer and a long -standing donor said in a statement on Wednesday, while he declared his candidacy.

Graham launched his campaign in February for a fifth six -year term representing the red state of South Carolina in the Senate.

In the United States, Graham says that Trump has shown that there was “a new sheriff in town”

Senator Lindsey Graham speaks to journalists from Capitol Hill on June 24, 2025. He appeared for a fifth term of six years representing South Carolina in the Senate. (AP photo / Jacquelyn Marti)

The senator was approved by Trump in March and this week, he announced that the republican consultant veteran Chris Lacivita, who was co -president of the president’s campaign in 2024 to win back the White House, arrived on board as the main advisor to his re -election campaign.

BAUER – Who presented himself without success to the post of governor in 2010 (during an election won by the Governor of now -former, the former UN ambassador and the presidential candidate of the GOP in 2024, Nikki Haley) and the Congress in 2012 after having served eight years as a lieutenant -government of the state of Palmetto – praised his references Trump and Maga.

First of all on Fox: Trump’s former ambassador launches the Bid Senate

“One of the country’s first leaders to approve Trump in early 2016, André was on the front line of the first America movement, and firmly resisted Trump on each question,” praised his campaign in their communication by e-mail. “André is a conservative conservative fighter who will shamelessly stand with President Trump and will put South Carolina first.”

Bauer stood alongside Trump at the Southern Caroline Statehouse in January 2023, when the former president announced his management team in the main voting state of the first.

Trump, at the time, called Bauer “A friend of me, someone who could, I think, run for almost all offices and win”.

Graham, with the Republican Governor Howie McMaster from South Carolina, also held alongside Trump during this event.

Eight years earlier, Graham was very critical of Trump because he was part of a large field of his competitors who ran against the real estate magnate and the reality TV star for the 2016 republican presidential appointment.

Former President Donald Trump salutes Senator Lindsay Graham during an electoral campaign in Columbia, South Carolina, January 28, 2023. (Logan Cyrus / AFP via Getty Images)

But Graham became a close friend and Trump’s best ally during the president’s first term.

The senator survived the main challenges of the right in his past re -election campaigns and was attacked for his more moderate positions on the questions of illegal immigration and climate change, as well as his advocacy for national muscle security and a foreign policy.

Before the American strike last month on Iranian nuclear installations, Graham urged Trump to “go everything” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Bauer, during its campaign launch, attacked the senator as a “globalist Lindsey Graham” and accused that he “spent three decades to send your taxes abroad and to regimes for financing wars of change all over the world instead of helping South Carolinians.

Bauer also argued that “Graham has repeatedly called for amnesty for illegal immigrants”.

Graham, Tuesday, hours before the launch of Bauer, featured his efforts to help the so-called “Big Beautiful” the expenses and the tax reduction of Trump, the Senate bill by a margin to a thin vote like a razor.

“I just had an excellent phone call with the president @Realdonaldtrump About his excitement concerning the adoption by the Senate of the major bill, “wrote Graham in an article on social networks.

And he pointed out that he was “incredibly proud to have waged the fight to move” One Big Beautiful Bill “by President Trump through the Senate budget committee and the complete adoption of the US Senate”.

Click here to obtain the Fox News app

Graham’s re-election spokesperson Abby Zilch also targeted Bauer.

“Andre Bauer spent his career to pursue titles to feed his ego, introduce himself to five different offices and even try to take advantage of Senator Graham and the White House for an ambassador. When it failed, he launched his sixth campaign – proving again, it is a question of returning Andre again,” said Zilch in a statement.

The Republicans dominate the elections across the state in South Carolina and the winner of the primary of the GOP Senate of next year will be considered the clear precursor in the general elections of 2026.