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Annie Andrews Makes South Carolina History With Senate Victory
By Eleanor Ever Loyal
Photo: U.S. Senate (public domain)
Annie Andrews, a Democrat and South Carolina’s senator-elect for the incoming 120th Congress, will take her seat in Washington after defeating Republican Sen. Darline Graham in a race that flipped the seat from Republican to Democratic control.
Andrews, a pediatrician, will become the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina. Her victory is also the first Democratic Senate win in the state since 1998.
The incumbent Andrews defeated, Graham, was an appointed Republican senator. Andrews’s election was one of seven Senate seats to flip from Republican to Democratic control in the 2026 election.
Those gains will give Democrats a 55–44 Senate majority when the new Congress takes office, with one Senate race, in Alaska, still uncalled.
The 120th Congress is scheduled to be sworn in on January 3, 2027, when Andrews will begin her Senate term.
The election gives South Carolina a new senator while marking two historical milestones established by the result: Andrews will be the first woman elected to the Senate from the state, and the first Democrat to win a Senate election there in nearly three decades.
What is established is that Andrews is a pediatrician whose election defeated an appointed Republican incumbent and helped produce the Democratic gains that will shape the Senate in the next Congress.
This profile is part of The Library Media’s The New Congressional Class series, profiling newly elected members of the 120th Congress.
Eleanor Ever Loyal
Today in Washington, The Library Media
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