Jaime Harrison spent over $100 million to fall short to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) by 10 percentage points. It was the most expensive defeat in history for a U.S. Senate candidate.
But three weeks later, Harrison has a simple explanation for what went wrong. “There were some Donald Trump coattails,” he told The Daily Beast, “that were pretty long.”
Indeed, the president supercharged GOP turnout in South Carolina, as he did elsewhere, and Graham ended up doubling his vote total from his last reelection, an easy win in 2014. The South Carolina senator ran less than a point behind his close ally at the top of the ticket, notching over 1.3 million votes.
