Lindsey Graham’s final act reverberates in Senate as sister is urged to “keep pedaling"

Lindsey Graham is gone and South Carolina hasn't even had a chance to sit with that before the vultures start circling his seat. His sister Darline Graham is stepping in to finish the term, which is the decent, orderly way to handle it. But within days you've got Russell Fry, Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman all lining up like it's a vacant House seat in a special election cycle, not a man's actual death. "Keep pedaling" is a nice sentiment for a grieving sister. It's a strange thing to be saying to reporters while three ambitious House members are already measuring the drapes.

Graham spent decades as one of the more polarizing figures in the party, loved and loathed depending on the week, but he was a fixture. Whatever you thought of his positioning on any given issue, the man showed up and did the job for a long time. The scramble to replace him says something about how little patience modern politics has for even a moment of stillness. Everybody's calendar is already running to the next primary.

Mace and Norman are sitting South Carolina House members with real political operations behind them, and Fry isn't far behind. None of that is illegitimate. Ambition isn't a sin, and South Carolina voters will get to sort this out themselves eventually. But there's something a little unseemly about turning a Senator's death into a instant three-way scramble before his family has even had time to grieve properly.

Darline Graham didn't ask for this job in the way these three are asking for it. She's holding the seat because her brother can no longer hold it himself. That deserves a little more room than it's getting, and South Carolina Republicans would do well to remember that the next election is not, in fact, tomorrow.