The Briefing, Vol. XIV, Issue 27
July 13, 2026
This week:
- Graham Platner drops out after rape allegation
- McMorrow exits — can the Dem establishment stop El-Sayed?
- Lindsey Graham abruptly passes away
Outlook
A lot can happen in two weeks, and over the last two weeks, it did. President Trump has resumed the bombing of Iran, ending the cease-fire — and investors seem strangely unworried. Ukraine is suddenly winning its defensive war against Russia, and Trump (who famously likes a winner) is suddenly much more supportive. Socialists remain on the march in their bid to take over the Democratic Party, knocking off an additional longtime Democratic House incumbent in Colorado.
Meanwhile, several important developments in Senate races threaten to shape the third and fourth years of Trump’s second term.
Senate 2026
Alaska: A man connected to Democratic operatives named Daniel J. Sullivan (I) will indeed be allowed to appear on the ballot in Alaska against Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan (R), the state’s supreme court decided, despite the obvious intention of confusing voters. Federal and state investigators are actually looking into this scheme to help Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola’s candidacy, but it is unclear what laws might have been violated, if any.
Stunts like this name-confusion bid would normally mean little. Longshot candidates counting on name confusion usually lose in primaries or are ignored by voters. But Alaska’s goofy top-four ranked choice voting system could allow the pretender Sullivan to advance to the general election and confuse voters when it counts.
Sullivan, the Republican senator, will be identified as the incumbent on the ballot, though.
Maine: Republicans were content to let the Nazi-tattooed antifa radical Graham Platner (D) lose altitude until it was too late to replace him on the ballot. Democrats, however, had other plans.
Just as the oyster hobbyist’s candidacy began to slip and his polling fell behind that of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Democrats came out with the knives. A rape allegation against Platner was finally aired after apparently being withheld in earlier New York Times reporting. Platner’s wife was also not-so-subtly threatened, in a leak from state investigators, with prosecution for alleged Medicaid fraud. That investigation will probably now vanish forever.
Platner finally did drop out of the race after releasing an angry, self-pitying 11-minute video, in which he almost seemed to threaten he might not fill out the paperwork to remove his name from the ballot unless certain conditions were met for replacing him on the ballot. (He did fill out the paperwork on Friday.)
Democrats probably dodged a bullet by sinking Platner’s career now, before he got any further. But they are putting themselves in a difficult position as they attempt to replace him last-minute.
Maine Democrats will hold a convention on July 25 to choose between much more conventional options such as former state Senate President Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (famous for trying to remove Trump from the ballot in 2024), former federal health official Nirav Shah (who just lost the primary for governor) and a handful of others. Interested candidates are required to submit notice to the party by Wednesday afternoon.
The new nominee, whoever it is, will begin his or her campaign very late and without the estimated $16 million in grassroots fundraising that Platner locked up and mostly burned up (all but $2 million of it according to the most recent filings) between announcing his candidacy and dropping out.
Despite Democrats’ strong desire to get rid of Collins, the new nominee will also be operating under the anti-democratic cloud that tainted (in the Left’s mind, at least) the presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris (nominated with no public vote), Hillary Clinton (supposedly nominated with inside party help against Bernie Sanders), and Joe Biden (nominated via strategic maneuvering by other candidates to drop out all at once in order to deny Sanders the nomination again). Considering Platner’s powerful performance in the primary, how enthusiastic will Democratic voters be to pull the lever for a replacement after his candidacy was so unceremoniously killed off?
Michigan: Amid Platner’s implosion, might Democrats come to a different conclusion about whom to nominate in other states? Some moderate Democrats hope so.
With state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) dropping out of the primary for the open seat in Michigan, the race is a two-way contest between leftist Abdul El-Sayed (D) and establishment favorite Rep. Haley Stevens (D). Most of McMorrow’s support had already evaporated by the time she quit the race. And given that she was challenging Stevens from her left, her voters might go for El-Sayed — although they might also have been supporting McMorrow specifically because they did not want to back Sayed.
Stevens has also been endorsed by the retiring incumbent, Sen. Gary Peters (D).
El-Sayed remins the favorite for now with a single-digit lead. Primary day is August 4.
South Carolina: No one saw this coming. If anything, they were waiting to see whether Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) might be forced to resign for health reasons, or worse. No one expected Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to die suddenly of heart problems.
A Clinton impeachment manager in the House, Graham was first elected to the Senate in 2002 over Alex Sanders, a since-forgotten figure who at the time was looked to as a rising Democratic star. Graham’s rise came as part of the modern Southern realignment toward the Republican Party, which began with the 1994 election and reached its apex in 2016 when the last Southern state legislative chamber (the Kentucky state House) turned Red.
Graham, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve who retired only in 2015, held all the standard conservative positions as a Republican officeholder. A critic and opponent of Trump in 2016, he at one point made a joke video about how he had to destroy his phone after Trump gave out his number. But as the years went on, Graham became one of Trump’s closest allies.
The coupling was strange, especially since Graham stood out for his hawkish views on foreign policy, which Trump seemed to reject. Graham was frequently attacked as a supporter of military adventurism, although he would have described it differently. He identified with the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), strongly supporting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and later Iran. Graham also favored muscular action against Russia — in fact, he had announced recently that he would be presenting a new package of sanctions against Russia this week as a form of pressure to end the war in Ukraine. He never got the chance.
As one of his last acts in office, term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster (R) will soon replace Graham with an appointment. There is talk of him appointing his lieutenant governor, Pamela Evette (R), who recently lost the primary runoff for governor despite having Trump’s endorsement. Other names being mentioned, however, include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (R) and Graham’s sister, who would presumably serve just until January.
The timing for a special primary election and possible runoff — Graham’s seat is up for re-election in November — could be a sticky issue. By law, the filing period begins the second Tuesday after the candidate’s death (July 21) with the election to follow three weeks later, or August 11. A runoff would occur August 25 if necessary. The timeline might have to be extended, though, because federal law requires 45 days for overseas military to cast their ballots.
Democrats nominated pediatrician Annie Andrews (D) in their primary last month. Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate race in South Carolina since Sen. Fritz Hollings’s (D) last race in 1998, nor have they won any statewide race since 2006.
