Republicans elected him chairman of the Senate Budget Committee for the 119th Congress, giving him a key role in advancing the president’s border security, military and spending priorities.
Back home at a recent GOP unity barbecue, Graham told South Carolina Republicans that if he won reelection in November, he would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
“I’ll wake up every morning and go to bed every night thinking, ‘How many judges can we put on the bench before Trump leaves in ‘28?’”
At the time of his death, Graham was both a leading architect of Trump’s agenda in the Senate and a reminder of the Republican Party that had existed before him.
He was a politician whose final decade was defined by loyalty, influence and contradictions that he never fully resolved.
But friends said the national profile never entirely changed the man they had known in the Upstate.
For much of his career — until security concerns made it impossible — Graham would drive himself, including to Clemson football games, in an old Crown Victoria.
Former S.C. House Speaker and ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, who chaired Graham’s 2002 Senate campaign, remembered something Graham told him early on.
“All I want to do is make a difference,” Graham had said.
“He’s the same guy I met in ’92,” Wilkins recalled, “still trying to make a difference.”
During a recent trip to Charleston, Graham expressed a deep belief in America.
Speaking to local reporters on July 1, three days before the nation was set to celebrate its 250th year, Graham encouraged Americans to keep betting on the United States.
“There are a hundred senators. I’m friends with most. We have a lot of disagreement, but the Senate is a place where people still talk, go to dinner, get along. I want to keep it that way,” he said.
He later paraphrased President Ronald Reagan, a titan in Republican politics, who famously said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”