Senator Lindsey Graham’s death in July — followed by his sister Darline’s temporary appointment to and campaign for his congressional seat — boosted national attention on South Carolina’s Senate race. This usually safe Republican seat now sits on shaky ground, especially after Darline Graham’s poor performance during her debate against Republican challenger Ralph Norman.
Dr. Annie Andrews, candidate for U.S. Senate in South Carolina, believes that South Carolinians deserve better than MAGA faithfuls who disregard real issues that Americans face. Dr. Andrews sat down with Tim to talk about how her background in pediatric medicine informs her policy stances on reproductive freedom, gun violence, and healthcare affordability.
Dr. Annie Andrews is the Democratic Senate nominee for South Carolina. She previously practiced medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, leaving to found a political organization focused on the climate crisis, gun violence and childhood poverty.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Tim Dickinson
Hi, this is Tim Dickinson for The Contrarian. Our guest today is the Democratic nominee for Senate in South Carolina, Dr. Annie Andrews. Annie, welcome to The Contrarian.
Annie Andrews
Well, thank you so much for having me, Tim.
Tim Dickinson
Tell us a bit about how you got from medicine into politics. Sorry, don’t.
Annie Andrews
interesting story. I… I decided to be a doctor when I was 4, so my whole childhood was built around this goal of being a physician. I went to medical school, I fell in love with working in a children’s hospital, I did that for 15 years, and over those 15 years of taking care of South Carolina’s sick and injured children, I started to understand the impacts of broken policies. on my patients. And the more I advocated for better policies to help our kids, you know, kids who I took care of who were struggling with food insecurity, kids whose parents couldn’t afford their prescription drugs, kids who have to spend the night in a hospital room alone because their parents have to leave their sick child’s bedside to go work their third shift job just to make ends meet. Kids who get admitted in the throes of a mental health crisis because their families can’t find mental health resources, and then the children I’ve cared for who have been shot, all of those things were blatant policy failures, in my view. I started to advocate for better policies, and as a South Carolinian, when I went to my state house talking to majority Republican lawmakers, what I was saying was falling on deaf ears, even though I was bringing my sad patient stories and the evidence. and solid policy proposals, so I very quickly understood the path to catalyze change for my patients and their families was by explicitly and directly engaging in politics on behalf of my patients and their families.
Tim Dickinson
And you previously ran for Congress in 2022 against Nancy Mace, who is a disreputable sort. What did you learn from that campaign?
Annie Andrews
I learned so much from that campaign. You know, I saw the ugliest side of politics because Nancy Mace was a pretty horrific opponent. The things she said about me were pretty horrible. But I think more importantly than that, I learned it’s important to fight no matter the odds you’re fighting against. Every race, we need a Democrat running who can give voters a choice. It was really important for me in that summer that Roe felt that I was able to give voice to the women in my state who felt like they had been left behind and felt very afraid. In that moment, I also learned how to be a better public speaker, and a better fundraiser, and all of those really critical skills you need to be a successful candidate. If I had not been a loser or congressional candidate, I would not be such a strong Senate candidate this election cycle.
Tim Dickinson
Well, your race is unique right now. You know, I think what might have looked a few months ago like a long-shot bid to unseat this, like, very established incumbent in Lindsey Graham, with his death, and now his sister in his seat, things are very much up in the air, and as we speak, there’s a runoff election still to be held between Darline Graham and Ralph Norman. Do you see an opportunity here to do more than, you know, run a good fight and be the minority, you know, be the Democrat, but actually to take this seat?
Annie Andrews
Absolutely, and you know, admittedly, when I got in this race over a year ago, the path to victory was narrow and very uphill, but there was a path. But really, every single day since I’ve been in this race, even before Lindsey Graham passed away, the path to victory was growing wider and wider and wider, because we’ve seen the results of all of these elections since November 2024, with double-digit shifts to the left, including all throughout the Southeast, in South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and really everywhere. And I was running against a deeply unpopular, unpopular incumbent. His approval rating was 34%, I had a poll that showed me down just three points, and then up on an informed ballot. I out-raised him all four quarters we were in this race together. So we were on a mission to defeat the, you know, the late Senator Lindsey Graham, but now that this is an open seat, we feel even more confident in our path to victory. I have a poll that shows me down just 1 point on Darline, and down just one point on Ralph Norman. Our fundraising is going really well. We’ve been building a people-powered movement all across the state of South Carolina, and we’re not just talking to Democrats, we’re talking to center-right Republicans who feel left behind by their party, even some MAGA Republicans who are really upset about the war, and of course, we’re talking to those critical independent voters. And I’m not a career politician, very different than Ralph Norman, and I actually have professional experience very different than Darline Graham that I can bring to this U.S. Senate seat.
Tim Dickinson
Well, let’s take these candidates sort of one at a time. Darline Graham obviously has had a huge flub in her recent debate, saying that she’s not a politician and couldn’t answer basic foreign policy questions, which, someone who’s, like, inherited Lindsey Graham’s seat is kind of an appalling thing. And, you know, when asked about, you know, what she was curious about, she said, you know, I think voters in South Carolina are more interested about boys and girls’ sports. What do you make of her performance, and what that says about the opportunity?
Annie Andrews
You know, her performance was wildly underwhelming. I think that’s a kind way to put it. It’s very clear she was not ready for prime time. You know, I do… my heart goes out to her. She just lost her brother. I don’t know the conversations that happened in back rooms that led to her to decide to run for a full U.S. Senate term, but she’s been thrust into the spotlight, or she’s thrust herself into the spotlight, expected to stand on a debate stage. to do these, you know, interview after interview, and she’s just not ready. She doesn’t have the depth of experience or knowledge, she’s not media trained, and all of that was glaringly obvious in the debate we all just watched. And, you know, more importantly and more concerningly to me, that tells me she’s not ready to lead. She’s not ready to be one of 100 U.S. senators. She, you know, needs to go back to her private life. But I see it as a huge opportunity. Unfortunately, I’m worried that her debate performance was so poor that if she is the nominee, her team won’t let her step on a debate stage with me. I challenged both Darline and Ralph Norman to commit to a series of live televised debates in the general election, if whoever the nominee is. They, of course, haven’t responded to me. I am so eager to step on the debate stage with either of them to give South Carolinians a real choice, but I’m worried now because she failed so, so, publicly on the debate stage that she actually won’t debate me. But we look forward to, you know, trying to get her there.
Tim Dickinson
Well, so Donald Trump is there, I think, this afternoon, trying to buttress support for her, but the opponent in the race is Ralph Norman. who’s one of the most conservative members of Congress by a fair shot, right? He’s somebody who chaired the Arch Conservative Freedom Caucus. What can you talk to us about him, and about whether he’s really somebody who has, like, statewide appeal in South Carolina?
Annie Andrews
Yeah, so, you know, he’s 73, which means he would be near 80 years old at the end of his freshman term in the U.S. Senate. He has been a career pol… sorry, a career politician who has enriched himself, you know, for the decades he’s spent in politics. He offers no new ideas. You know, he’s asking for a promotion at a job that he is objectively failing at. His positions are way out of step, where the majority of South Carolinians are. Like you said, you know, he’s incredibly extreme. He was one of the leaders of the Freedom Caucus. He famously brandished a gun at a meeting at a diner with gun violence prevention advocate constituents. He called for martial law, even though he spelled it wrong when Joe Biden was being sworn in. So he’s really extreme, and we don’t need another career politician. And, you know, I think he got kind of a free pass on the debate stage because Darline made such a hu- a couple huge gaps, but his performance was also incredibly underwhelming. You know, he’s blaming… he’s talking about the affordability crisis. He voted for Trump’s budget bill. You know, he is to blame for this affordability crisis. Both of them are running to the right, both of them are pledging allegiance to Donald Trump, not Trump not offering solutions for South Carolinians, and then next Wednesday, there’s gonna somehow magically pivot to the center and try to appeal to these center-right Republicans and independents that I’ve been talking to consistently since June.
Tim Dickinson
So what are the issues that resonate with people as you’re out there on the campaign trail?
Annie Andrews
I mean, it’s very similar to everywhere across the country. It’s all about affordability and the, you know, the broken healthcare system. Particularly, I’m hearing, of course, about gas prices related to our, you know, entry into this unnecessary, illegal war with Iran. I’m hearing about grocery prices that, you know, are due to the unconstitutional on-again, off-again tariffs. I’m hearing a lot about the healthcare deserts we have here in South Carolina. You know, we never even expanded Medicaid. We have 15 counties without an OBGYN. We have many counties where it is very difficult to find any kind of primary care doctor, certainly a pediatrician, or an OBGYN, or a mental health care professional. And we’re, you know, on the brink of this healthcare crisis with these impending Medicaid budget cuts, and a lot of voters in South Carolina understand what that could mean. for healthcare access, particularly in rural parts of South Carolina. So, this election, I believe, is going to come down to those two issues, affordability and healthcare. And I gotta tell you, when Ralph Norman was asked a healthcare question on the stage about how to increase access to healthcare. He talked about concierge medicine, which is what rich people do when they can pay cash for the healthcare that they need.
Tim Dickinson
I think people outside of the South may not have, like, an updated vision of what South Carolina’s like, and it really… my brother lives in Greenville, so I have, like, a sense of South Carolina’s quite blue, you know, cities, and then, you know, an overall political characteristic that’s, you know, undergoing a transformation. So, for people who are sort of stuck, like, oh, this is a deep red state, this couldn’t possibly work out. What is the flip opportunity there that… help people feel that a little bit?
Annie Andrews
Yeah, I mean, what South Carolina has is a number of things. We have our urban centers in Charleston, in Columbia, and in Greenville. Charleston and Columbia, or excuse me, Charleston and Greenville have experienced just, like, booming record growth. And then you even go down the coast from Charleston to Beaufort County, where we’ve had a lot of people move from the Northeast to retire, so the population is shifting a ton. We’ve had, you know, just incredible growth, and with that shifts the dynamics. In the upstate, because of BMW and Michelin Tire, there’s been more young families that come in to live in the Greenville area. The downtown has had a total renaissance. So these are very blue pockets of both Black and white Democrats. And then if you go outside of those urban centers, you see both very, you know, deep red-white rural areas and deep blue Black rural areas. But in those rural parts of the state, people understand that Trump running on lowering grocery prices and no new wars, and that he was going to be a fighter for the working class, they see that he’s broken all of those promises. So, there’s a lot of people who traditionally live in these deep red parts of the state, who vote for Republicans, who are curious about what other options there might be out there. But because of the increased population growth in our urban centers, in addition to the, like, really high level of Black Democratic-based voters, the math is not as hard as people think it is. And also, it’s a lot less expensive to win a Senate race in South Carolina when you compare it to some of the states with more expensive media markets, like neighboring Georgia, North Carolina, or even, of course, in Texas, where they have so many media markets. So, I’ve been telling people I’m a cheap date. We can win this seat with a much lower investment. And that’s what we’re, you know, laser-focused on achieving for the people of South Carolina.
Tim Dickinson
Your background in medicine, I imagine, gives you a lot of authority in speaking to people. What is your vision for how to bring down healthcare costs?
Annie Andrews
There’s so many things we need to do, and unfortunately, we have to fix a lot of what has been broken over the past year and a half, and the most urgent thing is stopping these impending Medicaid budget cuts, which really will be devastating to healthcare access all across the country, but particularly in states like South Carolina, who already have a very fragmented, fractured healthcare system that disadvantages the working poor. But beyond stopping those budget cuts, you know, urgently working to protect Medicare and reinstating the ACA tax subsidies and the Medicare Part D subsidies, fully funding the CDC and the NIH and impeaching and removing RFK Jr. once we get all of those things accomplished. We need to take really serious steps to shift our system from the profit-motivated system it currently is to a patient-centered system. And in my view, the way to do that is first by offering a public option. Because if you offer a public option, then everyone who doesn’t have employer-based health insurance, like me, for example, could choose to purchase a plan from the federal government, and those plans will not have that embedded profit motivation, so it decreased the cost It decreased the amount of money flowing through the system that ultimately goes to PAD shareholders of insurance companies’ pockets. And over time, as more and more Americans choose the public option, private insurance companies will be forced to offer more comprehensive benefit plans at lower premium rates, and then eventually, enough of us will be like, you know what, this public option is working pretty well. And then, when we get… when we get to that point, that’s when we can have a serious bipartisan conversation about really moving from this patient profit-motivated system, excuse me, to the patient-centered system.
Tim Dickinson
And I know that gun violence has been a motivating factor in your political trajectory. Would you talk about what your agenda is there? And particularly, I mean, South Carolina is a state sort of well-known for its defense of the Second Amendment, so how does that play in the field in South Carolina?
Annie Andrews
Yeah, I mean, I’ll start by saying I support the Second Amendment. Nothing on my gun violence prevention agenda infringes on the Second Amendment, excuse me. Like most parents in America, I can mark the age of my children at all of the largest mass school shootings. Like, I know I was pregnant when Sandy Hook happened. I know when Uvalde happened, and all those 4th graders were killed. My oldest daughter was in fourth grade. I know that when the Parkland shooting happened in 2018, My oldest child was in kindergarten. So it was the Parkland shooting that drove me off the sidelines on that issue in particular, because it was the first large school shooting I experienced as the parent of a school-aged child. And in the days after that shooting, I felt angry, vulnerable, motivated. My mama bear instincts kicked in, and I decided to use my voice to fight for change in South Carolina. So I joined Moms Demand Action. By joining that organization, I learned a lot about the power of my voice. as both a mom and a pediatrician, I learned about how to talk to lawmakers, how to effectively advocate for change. The positions on my platform that I’m advocating for, the majority of Americans and the majority of South Carolinians agree with. So it is a winning political issue in South Carolina. Number one, we have to pass universal background checks. And then I also support the passage of a federal red flag law, a federal secure storage law, increased funding for gun violence prevention. research and increased funding for hospital and community-based violence intervention programs. It is a public health crisis. I have cared for children who have been shot in the spine and will never walk again. I’ve cared for toddlers who have picked up unsecured, loaded firearms, picked them up, pulled the trigger with their thumbs, unintentionally shot themselves in the head. It’s a tragedy. It only takes standing at the bedside of one of these children. to be motivated to do better by America’s children.
Tim Dickinson
Thank you for that. I want to shift gears just a little bit to the affordability issues that are on everyone’s minds, and the connection between that and this war of choice in Iran. I wonder… What are your thoughts about how to rein in prices in the United States?
Annie Andrews
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s pretty clear there’s a direct link between the unconstitutional on-again, off-again tariffs and inflation, and thereby our grocery prices. So the first thing we need to do is we need Congress to utilize its constitutional powers to provide oversight to the Trump administration and stop these unconstitutional on-again, off-again tariffs. I also think we need to find our way out of this war so that we can lower gas prices. We need to raise the federal minimum wage. How long have we been having a conversation about a $15 minimum wage? And it’s beyond time to raise the federal minimum wage. We also need to pass an expanded, permanent, fully refundable child tax credit, which, while we work to address high prices, will help provide relief for the families in our communities that are struggling the most.
Tim Dickinson
Well, Dr. Andrews, it’s been a pleasure, and no one would, I think, accuse you of being underprepared. No, you seem to have a really solid grasp on the material here, and I thank you. Are there final thoughts that you want to share with our listeners and our viewers?
Annie Andrews
I just want people to recognize that we can win in South Carolina. We’ve elected Democrats statewide here before. We watched as Virginia and New Jersey both elected a woman and a mom to lead statewide in 2025. And, you know, if people want to learn more about the campaign, if they want to support me, if they want to help us expand the Senate map so we don’t all have to stare at Pennsylvania and Michigan every election night. If we want to have more options on the map, then they can go to DrAnnieAndrews.com to donate or to learn more.
Tim Dickinson
Well, Dr. Andrews, thank you so much for being a guest on The Contrarian. We’ll see you again, I hope.
Annie Andrews
Thank you for having me.
