WASHINGTON — Jim DeMint started talking about overhauling Social Security years before President Bush’s push for private accounts made the topic hot.

South Carolina’s junior U.S. senator knows so much about Social Security that Senate leaders picked him last week to represent the GOP during this Congress’ first official debate on the issue.

But the Greenville Republican got little notice for his effort. And more than DeMint, it’s the Senate’s other Republican from South Carolina, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham — a relative newcomer to the issue — who’s getting all the Social Security ink.

DeMint — former CEO of DeMint Marketing and son-in-law of Jim Henderson, perhaps the greatest ad man South Carolina ever produced — can’t seem to sell himself.

He rejects the irony.

To the contrary, he explains, the ad business taught him to sell everything but himself.

“If I didn’t eventually make the organization feel that it was the CEO’s ideas that I had promoted, it wouldn’t get done,” he said of his quarter-century in the ad game.

“It’s the same thing here. Sometimes you have to bring it around to where it’s the president’s idea, or it’s the chairman’s idea, or a group of people’s.”

After six years in the U.S. House and a bruising and drawn-out campaign for the Senate, DeMint has been back at work for 100 days.

For DeMint, it’s been 100 days of diligence — working long hours in backrooms with colleagues and staff on the weighty, transformative issues that, even as a House member, he called his own: Social Security, health care and tax reform.

For many of his constituents back home, however, it’s been 100 days of ... they-don’t-know-what.

Even admirers say they’re not exactly sure what DeMint is doing in Washington. That’s despite the hard work of two press secretaries whose full-time jobs are to get DeMint’s name in print and his face on television.

“I’m very pleased with him,” said state Rep. Joan Brady, R-Richland. “A little bit more visibility would be my only recommendation.”

NOT TOOTING HIS OWN HORN

So far, though, DeMint has been doing just the opposite.

This month, for example, he single-handedly held up President Bush’s nomination of Stephen Johnson as EPA administrator. He said he worried that the EPA would unfairly punish South Carolina for its air quality problems and impede economic development.

No news release was written.

DeMint was throwing his new senatorial weight around, but disdained calling attention to it.

“You stamp your feet too much, you make too much noise.” he said in an interview with The State. “Or I could do press releases on how I’m holding up a nominee.

“But that’s not the point. I don’t want to make an issue of that.”

The reluctance to seek publicity isn’t necessarily modesty.

Even as a House freshman, DeMint began pondering ways to make over some of the grandest federal programs of them all — with Social Security topping the list.

DeMint, who as congressman drafted a plan to overhaul Social Security with private accounts, has spent part of his first weeks as a senator rejiggering that proposal.

Compared to other private-account plans, DeMint’s would allow lower-income workers to invest more aggressively in stocks and bonds. It also comes with relatively high transition costs.

Ideally, he said, the restructuring of Social Security would be well under way in the fall — political roadblocks aside — and he could switch his attention to revamping the federal tax system, as the president’s tax panel releases its recommendations.

Will DeMint’s tax plan include a national sales tax — which he had to defend throughout his Senate campaign against charges that it hit the poorest the hardest?

Yes. He envisions a 10 percent national sales tax instead of an income tax and a simplified corporate tax code.

DeMint is not dramatic, but he proposes dramatic change.

“Individuals would never have to fill out a tax form,” he said.

NOT THE S.C. SENATOR IN THE NEWS

The comparisons to Graham are inevitable.

Graham, who has been particularly outspoken and quotable on Social Security, is the Palmetto State’s senator in the news. In the past few weeks alone, he has been profiled by the Washington Post and BusinessWeek and appeared on “Meet the Press” and “Fox News Sunday.”

Is DeMint doomed to work in Graham’s shadow?

“Jim DeMint is comfortable in his own skin,” Graham said. “I don’t think he feels threatened by me because I’m aggressive on issues and sometimes outspoken and that makes good copy.”

What South Carolinians get with DeMint is a serious legislator who is well-respected in his party, said Graham, who meets with DeMint about once a week.

“He stands his ground where he disagrees with me or other people, but he’s got a personality that makes him easy to do business with.”

Republicans in the S.C. delegation echo that sentiment.

“I’m really pleased that he’s lived up to expectations and works very closely with members of the delegation,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. “I meet or talk with him three times a week.”

But the Democrat who, with Wilson, represents Columbia, has had a different experience with the new senator.

“I have not interacted with Jim DeMint at all,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. “I have a relationship with Lindsey Graham, but I don’t have a relationship with Jim DeMint. I’m not sure why.”

DeMint says he and Clyburn will work together soon as Congress considers appropriations to the states.

“Give me a couple more months.”

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com