Trump-backed candidates win Republican runoffs in South Carolina and Oklahoma

Candidates backed by United States President Donald Trump won Republican runoff primary elections in South Carolina and Oklahoma on Tuesday. The twin victories provided a turn of fortune for the president following a sequence of electoral defeats for candidates he had publicly endorsed.

In South Carolina’s Republican primary runoff, Senator Darline Graham defeated veteran United States Representative Ralph Norman, according to race projections by American news channels CNN and NBC. Trump committed significant personal effort to the contest, traveling to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to deliver a campaign speech on August 21, followed by a telephone rally held the day prior to the vote. Speaking to attendees at the South Carolina rally, Trump urged his supporters to participate, saying, “So what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.”

Financial resources were heavily deployed in the South Carolina contest. The political organization MAGA Inc., which supports Trump, spent more than $827,000 on automated telephone calls and text messaging to mobilize voters. Source reports noted that such an expenditure represented an unusually rare deployment of the political action committee’s financial reserves for a primary election.

In Oklahoma, wealthy former state senator Mike Mazzei secured the Republican nomination for governor by defeating Gentner Drummond, the state’s sitting attorney general. Drummond had previously finished slightly ahead of Mazzei during an initial primary vote held in June. Total political spending in the Oklahoma runoff exceeded $9 million between the initial vote and Tuesday’s runoff, according to US media reports.

The Oklahoma race exposed sharp policy and political divisions. Trump repeatedly targeted Drummond during the campaign, calling him a “fake Republican.” A central point of conflict involved a planned $4 billion aluminum smelter championed by Trump. Drummond fought the project, asserting that the industrial plant posed risks to local land and surrounding communities. Mazzei publicly declared his support for the aluminum facility shortly before obtaining Trump’s official endorsement.

Tuesday’s election outcomes followed a difficult stretch for Trump’s political standing within his party. Prior to these victories, candidates endorsed by the president had lost 10 Republican primary contests during the current election cycle, including six defeats over the preceding two weeks, alongside a steep drop in Trump’s public approval ratings. Trump had pushed back against suggestions of declining influence days earlier, maintaining that his endorsements remained “stronger than ever” and framing the previous losses as acts of loyalty toward candidates in challenging races.

Background

In the United States political system, political parties select their nominees for general elections through state-level primary contests. In several US states, if no candidate secures an absolute majority in the initial primary round, a runoff election is held between the top candidates to decide the party’s official nominee.

Endorsements by prominent figures such as a sitting president are routinely used to signal party leadership and mobilize base voters during primary races. A president’s ability to carry endorsed candidates to victory is closely monitored by political analysts as an indicator of their political influence and control over the party base.