Lindsey Graham

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Lindsey Graham
Senior Senator from South Carolina
Incumbent
Assumed office  January 7, 2003 Serving with Jim DeMint
Preceded by	J. Strom Thurmond
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina's 3rd district
In office January 4, 1995 – January 3, 2003
Preceded by	Butler Derrick
Succeeded by	J. Gresham Barrett
Born	July 9, 1955 (1955-07-09) (age 52) Central, South Carolina
Political party	Republican
Spouse	none
Alma mater	University of South Carolina
Religion	Southern Baptist
Military service
Service/branch	United States Air Force
Years of service	1982 – 1988 (active) 1988 – present (reserve)
Rank	Colonel
Unit	Judge Advocate General's Corps
Battles/wars	Gulf War Iraq War

Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is an American politician from South Carolina. A member of the Republican Party, he is currently the senior United States Senator from that state. He serves on the Armed Services and Judiciary Committees.

Early life and education

Graham was born in Central, South Carolina, where his father, Florence James Graham, owned a liquor store. After graduating high school, Graham became the first member of his family to attend college and joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps. When he was 21 his mother died, and his father died 15 months later. Because he and his sister were now left orphaned, the service allowed Graham to attend University of South Carolina Columbia so he could be near home and care for his sister, whom he adopted. At the University he became a member of the fraternity Pi Kappa Phi.

Graham graduated from the University of South Carolina Columbia with a B.A. in Psychology in 1977 and from its school of law with a J.D. in 1981, Upon graduating Graham was sent to Europe as a military prosecutor, and eventually entered private practice as a lawyer.

Military service

Graham decided to join the United States Air Force in 1982, and served on active duty until 1988. Following his departure he stayed in the military by joining the South Carolina Air National Guard^[1] and the U.S. Air Force Reserves. During the Gulf War, he was recalled to active duty, serving as a Judge Advocate at McIntire Air National Guard Station in Eastover, South Carolina, where he helped brief departing pilots on the laws of war.

In 2004, Graham received a promotion to Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves at a White House ceremony officiated by President George W. Bush.

Graham served in Iraq as a reservist on active duty for short periods during April and two weeks in August 2007, where he worked on detainee and rule-of-law issues.^[2] That makes him the only Iraq war veteran serving in the United States Senate.

Political career in the House of Representatives and the Senate

In 1992, Graham was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from a district in Oconee County. After only one term, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives from the 3rd district in the northwestern part of the state after 20-year incumbent Butler Derrick retired. He won by a surprisingly large margin; the 3rd had never elected a Republican before. In his first reelection bid, in 1996, Debbie Dorn, daughter of longtime 3rd District congressman W.J. Bryan Dorn and Derrick's niece, challenged Graham. However, Graham turned back this challenge fairly easily, and was reelected in 1998 and 2000 with no substantive opposition.

In Congress, Graham quickly became powerful as a member of the Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. Graham opposed some articles, but vigorously supported others. In January and February of 1999, after two impeachment articles had been passed by the full House, he was one of the managers who brought the House's case to Clinton's trial in the Senate. Though the Senate did not convict Clinton, Graham became nationally known.

He was reelected to the House in 1996, 1998 and 2000. In 2002, upon the retirement of the long-serving Senator Strom Thurmond, the much younger Graham defeated his Democratic opponent, Alex Sanders. He became South Carolina's first new Senator since 1965, and the state's first freshman Republican Senator since Reconstruction. He faces a potentially difficult Republican primary in 2008 (see below), but should he survive he is not expected to face substantive Democratic opposition for a second term.

Legislative and Congressional committees on which Graham has served

SC House of Representatives: Judiciary Committee

U.S. House of Representatives

• Committee on Education and the Workforce, 1995–2002
• Committee on International Relations, 1995–1998Committee on Homeland Security, 1995–1997
• Committee on the Judiciary, 1997–2002
• Committee on Armed Services, 1999–2002

U.S. Senate

• Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, 2002–2004
• Committee on the Judiciary, 2002–present
  • Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
  • Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs (Ranking Member)
  • Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law
  • Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights
• Committee on Armed Services, 2002–present
  • Subcommittee on Personnel (Ranking Member)
  • Subcommittee on Airland
  • Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
  • Subcommittee on Strategic Forces
• Committee on the Budget, 2004–present
• Committee on Veterans' Affairs, 2007-Present
• Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, 2007-Present
  • Subcommittee on Domestic and Foreign Marketing, Inspection, and Plant and Animal Health (Ranking Member)
  • Subcommittee on Energy, Science and Technology
  • Subcommittee on Rural Revitalization, Conservation, Forestry and Credit
• Special Committee on Aging, 2007–present
• Select Committee on Intelligence, 2007–present

Political views

Though Graham's stances are often conservative, he has gained a reputation for sometimes speaking out against or criticizing the party line, as well as being open to making compromises. Graham votes as a conservative roughly 90 percent of the time, roughly the same as Thurmond's record, but is considered to be more independent-minded than his Senate colleague, Jim DeMint.

Graham notably supported John McCain's presidential bid in 2000, and is currently national co-chairman of McCain's 2008 presidential bid.

Gang of 14

On May 23, 2005, Graham was one of the Gang of 14 senators to forge a compromise that brought a halt to the continued blockage of an up or down vote on judicial nominees. This compromise negated both the Democrats' threatened use of a filibuster and the so-called Republican "nuclear option" as described in the media. Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance", and three conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate.

However, during the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, Graham let it be known that he did not consider Supreme Court nominations to be "extraordinary circumstances." If the Democrats had filibustered these nominations, Graham would have voted to implement the "nuclear option."

Detainee interrogations

In July 2005, Graham secured the declassification and release of memorandums outlining concerns made by senior military lawyers as early as 2003 about the legality of the interrogations of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.^[3]

In response to this and a June 2004 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing detainees to file habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detentions, Graham authored an amendment^[4] to a Department of Defense Authorization Act attempting to clarify the authority of American courts which passed in November 2005 by a vote of 49-42 in the Senate despite opposition from human rights groups and legal scholars because of the lack of rights it provides detainees.^[5][6]

The Graham amendment was itself amended by Democratic Senator Carl Levin so that it would not strip the courts of their jurisdiction in cases like Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that had already been granted cert; this compromise version passed by a vote of 84-14, though it did little to satisfy many critics of the original language. The Graham-Levin amendment, combined with Republican Senator John McCain's amendment banning torture, became known as the Detainee Treatment Act and attempted to limit interrogation techniques to those in the U.S. Army Field Manual of Interrogation. Verbal statements by Senators at the time of the amendment's passage indicated that Congress believed that Levin's changes would protect the courts' jurisdiction over cases like Hamdan, though Levin and his cosponsor Senator Kyl placed in the Congressional Record a statement indicating that there would be no change.

In February 2006, Graham joined Senator Jon Kyl in filing an amicus brief in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case which appears to have been an attempt to mislead the Supreme Court by presenting an “extensive colloquy” added to the Congressional record but not included in the Dec 21 debate as evidence that "Congress was aware" that the Detainee Treatment Act would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear "pending cases, including this case" brought by the Guantanamo detainees.^[7]

Immigration reform

Graham has been an adamant supporter of "comprehensive immigration reform" and of S. 2611, the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform Bill of 2006 as well as the equally hotly debated S. 1348 of 2007, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. Despite Graham's support the bill failed on a key Senate vote on June 28, 2007 and is unlikely to be revived.

Further the Washington Times reported that Lindsey Graham and John McCain "first checked with Mr. Kennedy before deciding to vote with the Massachusetts Democrat on an amendment to the Senate bill."^[8]

Graham addressed this saying "We are going to solve this problem. We're not going to run people down. We're not going to scapegoat people. We're going to tell the bigots to shut up, and we're going to get this right."^[9] He has also compared critics of the bill to anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish bigots.^[10]

National polls, including South Carolina, were heavily opposed to amnesty and Graham's support prompted conservative activists to abandon support for Graham in the 2008 election.

Grassroots efforts to oppose Senator Graham's reelection have arisen due to his positions on judicial nominations and immigration. Recent polls in South Carolina indicate that Graham's outspoken support of what critics deem "amnesty" for illegal immigrants have driven away many Republican supporters.^[11] He is now being challenged by longtime Republican national committeeman Dr. Buddy Witherspoon.^[12]

Alito confirmation hearings

During the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, Graham was accused by Democrats of having coached Alito before the hearings. Graham did express his support for him during the hearings. One of the most controversial moments of the hearings occurred when Graham asked Alito, "Are you really a closet bigot?" Alito answered "I'm not any kind of a bigot, I'm not." and Graham continued his statement by expressing his opinion that Alito definitely was not a bigot. Alito’s wife cried and left the hearing briefly.^[13]

Rosemary Alito, the judge's sister, said that her sister-in-law took the comments as a message of support. Rosemary responded with: "Martha understood them to be kind comments." "It was that expression of warmth, the feeling of support for Sam, that triggered an emotional response." After Samuel Alito's participation in the hearings ended, Martha-Ann Alito gave Graham a quick hug and he responded that he planned to give her children a book compiling "all the documents that we have from so many different people saying nice things about her husband."^[14]

Electoral history

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Lindsey Graham

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Lindsey Graham

• United States Senator Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senate site

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Voting record maintained by The Washington Post
• Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
• Campaign contributions at OpenSecrets.org
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Issue positions and quotes at On The Issues
• Lindsey Graham - U.S. Senate, Campaign site
• Senate Republican Caucus — Senator Lindsey Graham
• New York Times — Lindsey Graham News collected news and commentary
• SourceWatch Congresspedia — Lindsey Graham profile
• "Swing Conservative: The perilous bipartisanship of Lindsey Graham." Washington Monthly, April 2005
• "The American Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" by Sam Provance

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