Upstate GOP businessman kicks off challenge to Lindsey Graham

by Shaun Chornobroff, SC Daily Gazette

A Greenville businessman is the first Republican to announce a bid to take on U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham next year.

Mark Lynch, owner of Jeff Lynch Appliance Center, officially kicked off his campaign Monday at the store his father founded more than 70 years ago.

He’s running to the right of Graham, saying South Carolina’s senior senator — first elected to the seat in 2002 — is not a strong enough ally to President Donald Trump.

“Lindsey is not one of us, we all know that,” Lynch said while holding a Graham mailer. “I’m running for the United States Senate to remove a 30-year veteran named Lindsey Graham.”

The event followed Lynch’s campaign announcement, posted on social media last week, that accused Graham of betraying Trump and Republicans. His posts refer to Graham as a RINO, which stands for Republican in Name Only.

Acknowledging Graham’s sizable campaign war chest, Lynch said he plans to put between $4 million and $5 million of his own money into the campaign — possibly more if necessary.

Graham had more than $15.6 million available as of his latest campaign filing.

“We the people spoke during Trump’s election, and we are going to speak again,” Lynch said. “Lindsey Graham doesn’t have the money that God does.”

He touts that his business employs 110 South Carolinians. And “in his spare time,” he’s an addiction counselor, avid marksman and guitarist for a band name Concealed Damage. He’s also a deacon at his church, Burnsview Baptist, in Greer.

Lynch, a father of two and grandfather of four, previously tried to oust a state senator. In 2020, Lynch challenged state Sen. Scott Talley of Spartanburg County and lost by about 6 percentage points.

Lynch’s Feb. 5 entry into the 2026 race came a day after Graham announced that his re-election co-chairs are Gov. Henry McMaster and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott.

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“I have never known anyone who works harder for South Carolina than Lindsey Graham,” McMaster said in the release. “As our senator, Lindsey Graham is always on the front lines of the fight – where conservatives can count on him to stand with President Trump.”

Graham has had a sometimes-rocky relationship with Trump since the 2016 presidential campaign, which Graham briefly entered. He exited the race in December 2015 ahead of South Carolina first-in-the-South presidential primary, which Trump won. Graham declined to endorse anyone that November. But he’s been a strong ally since.

Last month, Graham did say he thinks Trump made a mistake in some of his pardons of people involved in the Jan 6., 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.

“Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer violently I think was a mistake, because it seems to suggest that’s an OK thing to do,” Graham told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

On Sunday, both Graham and Scott were among lawmakers accompanying Trump to the Super Bowl in New Orleans aboard Air Force One.

“Lindsey Graham is a conservative fighter, a colleague, and a friend, and I am proud to endorse his campaign and serve as co-chairman,” Scott, who leads the national committee to elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate, said in Graham’s Feb. 4 announcement.

Graham, who Republicans have blasted in the past as being too willing to compromise with Democrats, has a history of attracting — and besting — GOP challengers.

In 2014, he fended off six Republican opponents without needing a runoff. In 2020, he easily defeated three GOP challengers to his right before taking on Democrat Jaime Harrison, who lost by double digits in what was then the most expensive U.S. Senate race ever.

Graham was first elected to the state House in 1992. Two years later, he became the first Republican since Reconstruction elected to represent South Carolina’s 3rd District in the U.S. House.

In 2002, voters elected him to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, who left office after turning 100 and died six months later.

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