President Donald Trump took his midterm blitz to Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Thursday, October 29, rallying more than 1,000 supporters for Republican Senator Darline Graham in a Senate race that has turned into a dead heat in a state Republicans have dominated for decades.
Trump took the stage at the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center at about 1:15 p.m. and spoke for more than an hour, urging the crowd to vote for Graham in her race against Democrat Annie Andrews. "No president has ever worked so hard on a midterm," Trump told the crowd, acknowledging that his voice was raspier than usual after weeks on the campaign trail. "We just power through it."
A race Republicans never expected to be this close
South Carolina has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1998, and Trump won the state by nearly 18 percentage points in 2024. Yet a New York Times/Siena Poll released October 28 showed Graham and Andrews tied at 48% each among 707 voters, and Fox News shifted its forecast of the race on October 29 from Republican-leaning to a toss-up.
Graham, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, was appointed in July by Republican Governor Henry McMaster to fill the remaining months of her brother's term after his sudden death. She won the Republican primary — defeating U.S. Representative Ralph Norman by about five percentage points — with Trump's endorsement, but she has faced a surprisingly competitive challenge from Andrews, a Charleston pediatrician who previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress.
Rock Hill was a deliberate choice: it sits in Norman's congressional district, one of the areas Graham lost in the August primary and runoff. Trump has focused his recent South Carolina visits on exactly those regions, including a rally in Pendleton on October 21. A Citadel poll released October 27 found Graham's lead among Upstate voters grew from 6 points to 17 points after that rally.
What Trump said on stage
Trump praised Graham as a candidate who "has devoted her entire life to the people of the state" and attacked Andrews, saying she supports hormone treatments and gender-affirming surgeries for minors — a claim Andrews has refuted — and that she wants to take away people's guns, despite Andrews saying on the campaign trail that she supports the Second Amendment.
Attorney General Alan Wilson, the Republican nominee for governor, also called for party unity ahead of Election Day, urging Republicans to get behind Graham. Many in the crowd wore red "Make America Great Again" hats, and Holly Vaucher, a resident of Lexington who waited in line hours before the event, said she believes "freedom is at stake" in the midterms, which will decide control of the Senate and the House.
"Big Rally in South Carolina for the wonderful Darline Graham, today," Trump wrote on social media Thursday morning. "She is fantastic. Lindsey is watching, and very proud of her!!!"
What comes next
The midterm election is November 3. South Carolina has reported record-setting early voting since it opened on October 19, and early voting ends October 31. With the race tied, both campaigns spent October 28 crisscrossing Greenville, and Trump's Rock Hill stop marked his third visit to South Carolina this election season — a sign of just how much is riding on a seat Republicans once considered safe.
Sources: Greenville Online (USA Today Network), October 29, 2026; Associated Press via La Nación, October 29, 2026; Firstpost, October 29, 2026; New York Times/Siena Poll, October 28, 2026.