Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, appointed Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to replace him in the US Senate following his death on Saturday, after US president Donald Trump recommended that she be given the role.
Her appointment was welcomed by politicians from both parties, who saw Nordone as an appropriate replacement for the brother who had raised her after their parents died when she was a teenager.
“Lindsey took care of his little sister in years long departed. It’s my honour to ask his little sister, Darline Graham, to finish his work for him now,” the Republican governor said at a press conference convened at South Carolina’s state capital in Columbia.
Surrounded by the grieving family and friends of Graham as well as Tim Scott, who is now the state’s senior US senator following his colleague’s death, McMaster called Lindsey Graham an “irreplaceable” and “extraordinary” man.
READ MORE
In brief remarks Nordone (62) said: “Lindsey has always been there for me, and now I will be there for him.”
She offered no hint of deviation from her brother’s politics and made note that she would join the ranks of Trump’s allies in the Senate.
“I promise to work hard over the next several months to support the president and carry forward the efforts of my brother on behalf of the citizens of South Carolina and the United States,” Nordone said.
“I think this is what Lindsey would have wanted, and I plan to honour him in this way.”
Closing with a personal message for her late brother, she said: “I miss you more than I can even put into words, but I’m going to do this. I got it.”
The newly appointed senator and McMaster departed, without taking questions.
Nordone had earlier in the day picked up the support of Trump, who wrote on social media: “I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina. This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”
The governor said at the press conference that he had offered her the job early on Sunday morning, after her brother’s death was announced and she accepted “through tears”.
A commissioner at the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, Nordone is a trained optician who has previously been employed by Clemson University and the state’s department of employment and workforce, according to a biography distributed by the governor’s office.
She is the president-elect of the National Council Of State Agencies For The Blind, as well as a member of South Carolina’s workforce development board.
Nordone was known as having a close relationship with her brother, who became a surrogate father to her after the deaths of their mother to cancer, and then, 15 months later, their father to a heart attack, when she was a teenager. – The Guardian
– The Guardian
