Graham was born on July 9, 1955, and grew up in Central, South Carolina, population 2,000. His mother and father, neither of whom finished high school, ran a local restaurant/bar/pool hall called Sanitary Café, where Graham pitched in. When he was growing up, the Sanitary Café only offered takeout service to African-Americans while white people could eat inside.
When both of his parents died while he was in college, Graham became the legal guardian of his 13-year-old sister Darlene. He went on to graduate from the ROTC program at the University of South Carolina in 1977 and earned his law degree there in 1981. Then Graham joined the U.S. Air Force as a lawyer.
He served at the Rhein Mein Air Force Base in Germany for much of the 1980s before leaving active duty in 1989. Afterward, he joined the South Carolina Air National Guard, of which he was a member until 1994.
It was during his time in the Air National Guard that Graham was called to active duty during the first Gulf War. He served as a staff judge advocate at McEntire Air National Guard Base in South Carolina. While there, his job was to brief members of the Armed Services who were deploying to the Gulf, including providing legal services for their families. Since 1995, Graham has remained in the U.S. Air Force Reserves. Graham is currently an Air Force colonel and a senior instructor at the Air Force JAG School. In 2007, he served two weeks of reserve duty in Iraq, making him the only Iraq War veteran in the Senate.
Graham also spent time as a lawyer in private practice between 1988 and his election to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992. His first run for office was financed by winning a medical malpractice suit.
Congressional Career
Just two years later, Graham ran for the U.S. House seat being vacated by a 20-year veteran. Graham won the primary with 52 percent of the vote, and defeated Clinton-critic and conservative Democratic state senator, Jim Bryan, 60 to 40 percent, in the general election. Graham was the first Republican to be elected from his state’s 3rd Congressional District since 1877.
Graham was ushered into Congress in the Republican revolution orchestrated by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in 1994, but in 1997, he was instrumental in an attempted coup of Gingrich.
Graham immediately carved out a niche as a folksy, camera-ready advocate for the Republican Party. His seat on the House Judiciary Committee during the 1998 Clinton impeachment hearings gave him the opportunity to sometimes side with Democrats, such as when he voted not to release certain details of President Bill Clinton’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. He was the only Republican (out of 21) on the Judiciary Committee to voice support for censure of Clinton rather than impeachment.
Famously, Graham opened a committee meeting by asking, “''Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?''
“Nobody can tell me yet whether this is part of a criminal enterprise or a bunch of lies which build upon themselves based on not wanting to embarrass your family. If that’s what it is, about an extramarital affair with an intern, and that’s it, I will not vote to impeach this president no matter if 82 percent of the people back home want me to, because we will destroy this country,” Graham said.
Ultimately, however, Graham sided with the majority of Republicans. He served as a House manager of the impeachment trial and voted for three of the four articles of impeachment.
Though the case got him national attention, Graham says he doesn’t want it to define him. “I don't want to be remembered as the impeachment boy. That shortchanges who I am. I know the first line of my obituary is going to be that. Bill Clinton's obituary will mention it too. I'm no more happy about it than he is.”
Graham made it known early that he would run to succeed Sen. Thurmond, who had been in the Senate longer than Graham had been alive. In 2002, he received Thurmond’s endorsement and didn’t have any competition in the Republican primary. He faced Democrat Alex Sanders, a former member of the state House, the state Senate, the state Court of Appeals and a former president of the College of Charleston. Despite Sanders’ reputation as a raconteur and a good fundraiser, Graham hammered him for his liberal associations and won, 54 to 44 percent.
In 2008, Graham easily won re-election 57 to 42 percent over Democratic challenger Bob Conley, an engineer and flight instructor who had been a Republican supporter of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) just a year earlier. Conley had $20,000 on hand compared to Graham’s $3 million.
In the Senate, Graham sits on five committees: Agriculture, Armed Services, Judiciary, Budget, and Veterans Affairs.
He is single and lives in Seneca, S.C.
