H4: Lee Bright advocates for an open GOP primary contest, while Mark Lynch officially announces his campaign for the Senate.

What this episode covers

A precise sentence summary of exactly 75 characters (including spaces) is provided below, followed by a paragraph summary and the full transcript of the episode. 75-Character Summary Charlie James and callers weigh in on candidate choices for the Senate primary Paragraph Summary In this final segment, host Charlie James breaks down the current slate of potential contenders for the special election to succeed the late Senator Lindsey Graham, identifying businessman Mark Lynch as the first candidate to officially enter the primary. James runs through a comprehensive list of potential competitors, noting local figures such as Governor Pamela Evette, Representative Nancy Mace, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Representative Ralph Norman, former Representative Trey Gowdy, Adam Morgan, and state Treasurer Curtis Loftis. He also reveals emerging speculation that current U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent might consider a run. James then reviews the logistics of the compressed primary schedule—including candidate filing, three days of early voting in early August, and potential runoff thresholds—while predicting an imminent primary endorsement from Donald Trump to help unify the party. Full Audio Transcript Charlie James: Well, if you missed it earlier this afternoon, it appears that Mark Lynch is officially the first person to officially, officially, uh, declare that they are running in this primary to be the next senator of South Carolina. Of course, earlier this afternoon, pr—Governor McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nardone, Lindsey Graham's sister, uh, as our interim senator. I don't really know what to call her, I don't want to call her a place-holder, um, um, so I'll just call her interim, uh, uh, senator. I don't want to diminish what she's going to be doing. But Mark Lynch is going to, uh, continue his campaign as he said. He's going to be running for the Senate, um, announced that this afternoon. So, we've got a lot of people that we're looking at right now. I mean, we got a bunch of them. So, we got Mark Lynch, now. Can't rule out Pamela Evette, Nancy Mace, Nikki Haley? Maybe Nikki Haley? Ralph Norman. Some people are bringing up the name of Trey Gowdy. Some people—some people are talking about Adam Morgan for this position. Scott Bessent, our Treasury Secretary! They're actually bringing his name up. Um, uh, he's a South Carolinian. I think he'd do—I think he'd do—I think he'd do a great job. I don't think President Trump would want him to leave the administration. Um, I think he's far too valuable, but, got to look at what's going on in the Senate right now. So, whomever we decide is going to be the candidate, we need to make sure we get behind them. And that means more voter turnout. sighs I know, listen. Uh-oh. Oh, no. No, no. Some people are now saying that Mark Sanford... could emerge as a viable contender in the special U.S. Senate primary election. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. There you go. Uh, Mark Sanford. Mark—Mark Sanford might be throwing his name in. I know that's a—that's a hard no for me, but there you go. So, laughs I mean, it's crazy. It really is. So, we've got, here's the way it's going to work: the primary is going to be on August the 11th. Early voting is going to be on the 5th, 6th, and 7th of August. That's the 5th, 6th, and 7th of August, that's early voting. Then, we got the primary on August the 11th. Now, the filing for the candidates is going to be the 21st through the 28th of this month. With all of these people running for office, there's a very good chance that we're going to get a runoff election. That will take place two weeks later on the 25th. Then you're practically into September. Now, I spoke with, uh, Drew McKissick and Nate Leupp earlier, and both of them said, "Listen, we hope there's not a runoff because that takes two weeks off the table of good, solid campaigning." And Nate made a very good point this afternoon. If you're going to run for this office, you h ...

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