South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham joins Republican presidential race
Graham, an unconstrained Republican hawk, immigration reformer and firearms enthusiast, is ninth Republican to announce a White House bid
Lindsey Graham, the unconstrained Republican hawk, immigration reformer and firearms enthusiast, announcedhis presidential bid on Monday morning in his hometown of Central, South Carolina.
Promising voters an uncompromising fight against foreign adversaries and smaller government at home, Graham would become the ninth Republican to announce a White House bid. The GOP field includes three other senators.
Graham, 59, who joined Congress in 1994 and has won re-election to the Senate twice by large margins, spoke to a crowd of long-time supporters in Central, a town of about 5,000, where he grew up behind the pool hall and restaurant his parents owned and ran.
“Some of you have known me since I grew up in the back of that bar in that building,” Graham told his audience. “But no one here, including me, expected to hear me say, I’m Lindsey Graham, and I’m running for president of the United States.”
“I’m not going to be the most ideologically pure guy in the primary,” Graham told reporters at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition last month. His support for a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants already living in the United States, for example, has been dismissed in some purist circles as “Grahamnesty”.
In one area of Republican thought, however, Graham follows an orthodox if notably enthusiastic line. He has used congressional hearings on gun violence to oppose new limits on magazine capacity for rifles and to boast of his ownership of an assault rifle.
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