Carolina South Carolina at a Glance State Profile - Gov. Hodges (D) - Sen. Thurmond (R) - Sen. Hollings (D) Presidential Politics Congressional Districting - 01 - Sanford (R) - 02 - Spence (R) - 03 - Graham (R) - 04 - DeMint (R) - 05 - Spratt Jr. (D) - 06 - Clyburn (D) Almanac 2000 Home States & Districts Elected Officials For district profiles and additional information on the elected officials of South Carolina, please use the pull-down menu above.

The South Carolina Up Country, many days' travel by wagon from the Low Country plantations, was first settled by Scots-Irish farmers, like the family of John C. Calhoun in the years around the Revolutionary War. The pioneers wanted to make big plantations of these forests, but the land did not always cooperate; it was often too hilly for the labor-intensive rice crop grown in the Low Country and sometimes too cold for cotton. So relatively few slaves were brought here, and the land was mostly small farms owned by whites. Today, the racial and cultural tone of Up Country South Carolina shows traces of these roots. This is a mostly white part of the South, with a hell-of-a-fella tone to daily life, an economically growing and culturally tradition-minded slice of Middle America.

The 3d Congressional District covers much of this territory, following the Georgia border from the government's troubled Savannah River Site all the way north to mountains on the North Carolina border. In the southern part of the 3d are a few heavily black communities, like Edgefield, where Strom Thurmond grew up and first won public office in the 1930s. But the major population center here is the increasingly affluent suburban strip linking Aiken and Augusta, Georgia. In the northern part of this district, Calhoun had his mansion and his son-in-law founded Clemson University nearby. Here today, the Savannah River intersects Interstate 85, the main street of what was once America's textile belt and now of the booming Southeast from Raleigh-Durham to Atlanta, one of the nation's prime economic growth areas.

The politics of this area, ancestrally Democratic, has been trending Republican for years. Yankified Aiken started voting Republican for Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, well before Thurmond switched parties in 1964; Anderson skittered around, supporting Jimmy Carter for a while but then veering Republican again; Pickens and Oconee counties around Clemson and the mountains are heavily Republican. This is a fervently religious part of America, and the increasing secularism and hostility to religious values of many leading Democrats moved it away from its ancestral party. In presidential elections the 3d has been solidly Republican in the 1980s and 1990s, and it voted Republican even as Democrats swept the state in 1998.

The congressman from the 3d District is Lindsey Graham, a Republican first elected in 1994. Graham grew up in Oconee County, where his parents owned a ''beer joint''; he was the first in his family to graduate from college and law school, then served in the Air Force as a prosecutor; in 1988 he returned home and practiced law, also serving as judge advocate at McEntire Air National Guard base. He was called up to active duty and served stateside in the Gulf war. In 1992 he was elected state representative. In 1994, with the retirement of 20-year Congressman Butler Derrick, a member of the Democratic leadership who came under tough criticism in South Carolina, Graham ran for Congress. Both parties here had contested primaries, but the Republican contest attracted more voters--41,000 versus 35,000--and Graham emerged as a clear winner, with 52% of the vote. In the general he faced state Senator Jim Bryan, who won the Democratic runoff against Deborah Dorn, daughter of Derrick's predecessor in the House. Graham called for term limits, supported more defense spending and was against gays in the military. His attitude toward the Clinton Administration and the House Democratic leadership was unequivocal: ''I'm one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.'' Bryan also campaigned as a conservative--pro-life, anti-gays in the military, against employer mandates in health care, against defense cuts, and boasted of his experience in the legislature. But Graham modeled his campaign after Bob Inglis's successful 1992 race in the next-door 4th District and won 60%-40%--a smashing victory in a district represented only by Democrats since Reconstruction. In 1996 he was opposed by Dorn, and won by 60%-39%. In 1998 he was unopposed.

In the House Graham has a strong though not entirely conservative voting record. He supported the Contract with America and called for lifting the tax burden on individuals and removing onerous regulations on business. He continued to be an enthusiast for term limits. He opposed the May 1997 budget deal because it included a children's health insurance plan financed by higher tobacco taxes, but he bucked the leadership in 1998 on HMO reform, arguing that patients should have the right to sue. Much of his legislative work has been devoted to the Savannah River Site (SRS). This huge installation was once used to manufacture tritium for nuclear weapons; with as many as 35,000 jobs, it was among the largest employers in South Carolina. Now the nuclear plant is shut down and SRS is used as a holding site for foreign nuclear waste while the government works on developing a long-term disposal. Graham has worked to make SRS a waste processing site for surplus weapons-grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium, to keep reprocessing canyons fully used to process nuclear waste and to place a linear accelerator there; with nuclear power foe Edward Markey he sponsored an amendment to block any commercial tritium reactor that would be built elsewhere.

Graham is the kind of politician who often follows his own piper. In January 1996 he was one of 15 Republicans who voted against settling the budget fight. He came to see Newt Gingrich as just another deal-making career politician: ''The Contract with America was a political event for him; it was sort of my reason for being.'' In July 1997 Graham helped organize a group of Republican leaders to plot the toppling of Gingrich, and Tom DeLay said he would vote to oust the speaker. This coup quickly foundered--it could have given Democrats control of the House--and in a Republican conference meeting when Dick Armey said no Republican leader was involved, Graham lunged to the microphone to contradict him.

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Graham played a major role in impeachment. At first he noted that his district strongly favored removal, but insisted that he started off undecided. But when Clinton defenders quibbled about the meanings of words and insisted that Clinton's deposition testimony was ''legally accurate,'' Graham exploded in opposition. In December 1998, he said, ''If people in America follow Bill Clintonspeak, we're going to ruin the rule of law, and he's not worth that. No one person in America is worth trashing out the rule of law and creating a situation where you can't rely on your common sense.'' He was especially upset with the way Clinton used the official powers of the White House to discredit Monica Lewinsky: ''The way he treated Monica Lewinsky, his political interests were more important than the truth or welfare of the person he was involved in a sexual relationship with. He was using the office in a most sinister way. The country is in trouble when you let politicians use the resources of their office to crush a citizen who may get in their way.'' Yet Graham voted against impeaching Clinton for lying in the Paula Jones deposition, on the ground that it was later ruled immaterial by the judge (although after Congress voted the judge held him in contempt of court for it). In the Senate trial, Graham's folksy manner and clear description of Clinton's offenses--''Where I come from, a man who calls someone up at 2:30 in the morning is up to no good''--made him one of the most effective managers. Yet he conceded a major political point when he agreed that a reasonable person could disagree on whether Clinton should be removed.

When Graham was elected in 1994, he imposed a six-term limit on himself, but he may well run for the Senate before that comes up in 2006. In December 1998 he said, ''If I can live long enough to see Senator Thurmond retire--and I have no doubt about him, but I have some doubts about me--it would be an honor to serve in the Senate.'' He should be considered a strong candidate for Thurmond's seat in 2002 or Ernest Hollings's in 2004.

Cook's Call:
Safe. Despite his high-profile role as a House impeachment manager, Graham is not going to feel a serious fall-out in this very conservative district that has never given Clinton more than 39% of the vote.

The People:

• Pop. 1990: 580,861
• 58.5% rural; 13.6% age 65+;
• 78.3% White, 21% Black, 0.4% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.5% Hispanic origin; 0.1% Other.
• Households: 58.8% married couple families; 28% married couple fams. w. children; 33.3% college educ.; median household income: $25,693; per capita income: $11,707; median gross rent: $222; median house value: $53,900.

1996 Presidential Vote Dole (R) 100,390 (54%) Clinton (D) 71,755 (39%) Perot (I) 13,220 (7%)

1992 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 101,962 (51%) Clinton (D) 69,161 (35%) Perot (I) 26,424 (13%)