Annie Andrews won the Beaufort County election results in South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Darline Graham on Tuesday. The called the race for Andrews, and she said at her after party in Charleston, “I think we just made some history.”
The win gives South Carolina its first woman elected to the Senate and its first South Carolina Democrat voted into the chamber since Fritz Hollings. Andrews also thanked Graham in her victory speech Tuesday for her service and for her love of South Carolina.
Mark Hammond and David Stumbo
Statewide voters also kept Mark Hammond in the secretary of state office. Hammond won reelection with 52.9% of the vote over Jason Belton, extending a tenure that began when he was first elected in 2002.
David Stumbo won the attorney general race with 52.3% of the vote, taking over from Alan Wilson, who has held the office since 2011. Those results leave South Carolina with two top statewide offices changing hands while the Senate race produced the night’s sharpest shift.
South Carolina House margin
Democrats appeared to gain at least 10 seats in the South Carolina House, with flips across Clarendon, Dorchester, Greenwood, Lexington and York counties. They ran candidates in every seat in the 124-member House this year, after starting the cycle with 35 seats to Republicans’ 89.
Republicans still held the House majority even as Democrats broke through the Republican-controlled supermajority they had been trying to defend. The chamber’s balance shifted, but not enough to change control, while the state Senate remained at 34 Republicans and 12 Democrats.
In Charleston, Andrews cast her win as a break with long-standing history, while Lauren French of Senate Majority PAC said in a statement that the state “said no thanks” after Republicans and Washington Republicans poured money into Graham’s race. The practical result for voters is a new Senate face for South Carolina, a familiar secretary of state, a new attorney general, and a House map that moved several seats without changing the majority.
