Graham has had good timing, meteoric rise

e-mail this story print this story Dan Hoover • Graham has had good timing, meteoric rise (03/19/05) • DeMint, Inglis agree, differ with Graham on timeline for Iraq war (03/13/05) • Campbell name could test dynasty theory (03/06/05) • Bauer still supports tort reform (02/13/05) • President Sanford? Perhaps (02/05/05)

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In early 1992, just 13 years back, 36-year-old Lindsey Graham was practicing law in Seneca, locally respected, although little known beyond the Oconee County Courthouse. He'd returned home only four years earlier after spending six years, mostly overseas, as a military prosecutor.

Today, he sits in the U.S. Senate and is widely credited with having the influence to broker a deal that could remake Social Security.

As a moderate Republican with a populist streak and a straight-talking, folksy manner, he was readily adopted as a darling of the national media, but a maverick nature has at times put him at odds with the powers that be. After all, one man's maverick can be another man's loose cannon.

Graham has become a fixture far beyond South Carolina, from the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times to the Sunday morning talk shows.

Timing has played a key role in Graham's rise to prominence, from his legislative days to the present when he has achieved a degree of prominence and influence well beyond what a newcomer with 15 months in the seniority-steeped Senate might otherwise expect.

Risk-taker

"I've always been willing to take a risk, and if you're willing, good and bad things can happen to you," Graham said last week.

It was a combination of intuitiveness and just plain fortuitous timing.

Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political scientist and Republican consultant who ran Graham's 1994 and 1996 congressional campaigns, said the senator "has the best instincts — gut instincts — of any politician I've ever seen."

Lindsey made some breaks and benefited from timing," Woodard said.

Graham ran for Oconee's 2nd District seat in the state House of Representatives in 1992 at a time when Pickens, Oconee, and Anderson counties, plus much of the 3rd Congressional District along the Savannah River Valley, were poised to become as Republican as neighboring Greenville and Spartanburg.

"In '92, it set up well for me. I was on the leading edge of (political) change that was beginning to build," Graham said.

He ousted first-term Democrat Lowell Ross and took a seat in Columbia.

'Great potential'

"I knew he had great potential. In fact, I'm the guy who, when he asked me about running for Congress, told him that as a rising star in the state House, he'd be foolish to run," said House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville. "Shows how much I know," Wilkins laughed.

While Graham was learning the state legislative ropes, 20-year Democratic U.S. Rep. Butler Derrick of Edgefield was growing restless.

In 1994, he would become one of 40 or so House members to retire in what was to be a watershed year. Like The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, this was to be the year the Democrats lost the House.

Graham jumped at the opportunity.

Each party had a tough primary, but the handwriting was on the wall: Democrats drew 35,000 voters, the GOP, 41,000. Things were changing.

In November, Graham won going away, taking 60 percent of the votes in a district that hadn't elected a Republican since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period.

It was the era of term limits and many Republican newcomers opted for three and out. Not Graham; he said six terms, thank you.

He only needed four. High profileAlong the way, he elevated his national profile, first as one of the mavericks who attempted a palace coup against House Speaker Newt Gingrich for his suspected apostasy to the Republican Revolution, and as the House's hardest-charging prosecutor of President Clinton's impeachment.

With his 100th birthday approaching in December 2002, Sen. Strom Thurmond announced his retirement after what would be 46 years in office.

To Graham, that was "fortuitous for me, that I was there and had some experience when the senator decided to step down."

Graham was running even before Thurmond made it official and warded off what many had expected to be a wide-open primary field. He went on to ride the state's now solid Republican majority to an easy November victory.

"Timing's everything, but you also have to have the ability and sense and skills to take advantage of it," Wilkins said. Falling dominoesHad Derrick not resigned, if Clinton hadn't involved himself in serious indiscretions, Graham might not have gotten himself on the national stage. When each opportunity presented itself, Graham had the smarts and skills to take advantage of it, Wilkins said.

As a maverick long allied with the Senate's number one maverick, Arizona Republican John McCain, Graham has often bucked Republican dogma, from trying to oust Gingrich to tweaking the Bush White House to breaking with many colleagues to support a tax hike to give Social Security more fiscal breathing room.

"I became a player by rejecting orthodoxy (in favor of Reaganesque) give-and-take," he said.

His 13-year political career, Graham said, "has been part sheer good timing, willingness to take a risk, and, I hope, a little talent." Dan Hoover's column appears on Sunday. He can be reached at (864) 298-4883 or toll-free at 800-274-7879, extension 4883, and by fax at (864) 298-4395.