Long-Time Graham Supporter Backs Democrat Harrison
Campaign 2020 - Richard Wilkerson is the former head of Michelin Tire's North American operations, which is headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina. He has been a long-time supporter of South Carolina's senior Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, even serving on the Senator's Presidential campaign finance team in 2016.
It may surprise you, then, that Mr. Wilkerson is not backing Mr. Graham for re-election this year. In fact, he has stated he will be voting for Senator Graham's Democratic challenger, Jaime Harrison, this fall.
Why the major change of heart? Initially, Mr. Wilkerson limited his comments to saying that, having worked with Mr. Harrison in the past, he had been impressed with Mr. Harrison's intelligence and concern for all Citizens, his moderate stance on the issues, and his effectiveness in working with people from both parties.
 (Wilkerson image from Greenville News)
Many South Carolinians continued to press Mr. Wilkerson, though. Why is he no longer supporting Senator Graham? Consequently, and despite always having been reticent to express his political beliefs publicly, Mr. Wilkerson decided to discuss his disenchantment with Senator Graham in a May op-ed piece he penned for the Greenville News. In that piece, he wrote the following:
I supported Lindsey Graham until 2017. I saw him as a moderate Republican who could work across the aisle to get positive change made. But I started having real misgivings about him when he failed to mount any significant defense when Donald Trump attacked his best friend, the late Sen. John McCain.
I asked myself, "What is the character of a man who will not defend his best friend? If he won't defend John McCain, why would I expect him to defend any of us in South Carolina?"
...Then, the willingness to work across the aisle seemed to vanish. I do not want to say that this was the exclusive fault of Republicans, ... but Sen. Graham was a leader of this divisiveness. His criticism of the behavior of the president morphed into blind defense.
{Lastly, Mr. Graham}….supported tax change that disproportionately favored those who are financially well off while providing a comparatively small benefit to working people.
Recently, he has tried to block the PPP because he feels that it provides unemployment benefits that are too high for the working people who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 crisis. Apparently, he feels that it is OK to share government dollars with those who don't truly need the money, but deny any small windfall to working people who have lost their jobs. These two actions tell me who is important to him, and I do not agree with his direction.
Mr. Wilkerson concluded by saying that he wrote to Mr. Graham, telling the Senator that he {Mr. Wilkerson} no longer recognizes Mr. Graham as being the person he used to support.
 (Graham image from cnn.com)
Sad to say, we couldn't agree more. Our disappointment with Mr. Graham during the past three years is second to none. His unbelievable flip-flopping on issues such as the character of Donald Trump, the grounds for impeachment of a President, whether a Supreme Court justice should be confirmed in an election year, etc. still amazes us. It shows Mr. Graham to have become a toady and a partisan hack of the worst kind, one who now regularly puts party before principle, Constitution, and country.
Consequently, like Mr. Wilkerson, we encourage our friends throughout South Carolina to support Jaime Harrison for the U.S. Senate this fall.
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