Dr. Annie Andrews, a 45-year-old paediatrician from Mount Pleasant, is seeking the Democratic nomination for South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat. Andrews had been conducting a grassroots campaign for over a year aimed at unseating Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in the midterm elections when Graham died at age 71 earlier this month. Graham’s sister, Darline, was subsequently appointed to serve the remainder of his term and will compete in a Republican primary next month to determine the party’s nominee for November’s general election.
Andrews, who has spent two decades working in public healthcare including 15 years at a children’s hospital in Charleston, framed her entry into politics as a response to systemic policy failures affecting patients and families. She previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022 against Republican representative Nancy Mace, losing by 14 percentage points. That defeat prompted her to step away from clinical practice and establish a political organization focused on climate, gun violence, and childhood poverty.
Andrews cited the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services as a catalyst for her current Senate campaign. She expressed concern that Kennedy’s long history of amplifying anti-vaccine views poses a direct threat to public health. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, measles cases in the United States have reached a 35-year high, with more than 90 percent of reported cases occurring among the unvaccinated or those with unknown vaccination status.
Andrews’s policy platform includes defending Medicare, lowering prescription drug costs through federal negotiating authority, and gradually introducing a public option to increase insurance competition. She has also advocated for addressing gun violence, which she described as the leading cause of death for children nationwide, and supports measures such as universal background checks. Additionally, she proposed structural reforms including ending partisan gerrymandering, implementing congressional term limits, banning stock trading by members of Congress, and overturning the Citizens United Supreme Court decision to reduce dark money in politics.
Despite assembling a statewide campaign apparatus with over 2,000 volunteers and receiving endorsement from Her Bold Move, a national support network for women candidates, Andrews faces significant structural disadvantages. South Carolina is a Republican stronghold where statewide elections have historically been decided by double-digit margins. In 2020, Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison raised over $100 million but lost to Graham by 10 percentage points.
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