SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM DEAD AT 71

Trump's closest Senate ally and the chamber's loudest hawk died after a “brief and sudden illness,” his office said. It disclosed no cause.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who spent twenty-four years in the Senate and became Donald Trump's closest ally there, died Saturday evening at 71, his office announced Sunday.

The statement said Graham died after a “brief and sudden illness.” It gave no cause and asked for privacy.

Graham won his seat in 2002 and was running for a fifth term. He wrote the Senate's Russia sanctions bill, pushed to arm Ukraine, cheered the strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, and stood among Israel's closest allies in Congress.

He called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” in 2016. Then he became the president's golf partner, his standing phone call, and his first defender on every Sunday set.

One day before he died, Graham stood with the Trump administration to announce a new agreement on Russia sanctions — the cause that defined his last years.

His death opens a Senate seat. Governor Henry McMaster names a temporary replacement. A special Republican primary follows by August 11. Annie Andrews, a Democrat, already sits on the November ballot.

For years Graham bent toward whoever held power, and power kept handing back the seat he never lost. He leaves it the way Washington least expected — suddenly, unexplained, and up for grabs. The hawk is gone; the fight for his perch starts tonight.