COLUMBIA — Talk about an expensive tee time.
Longtime golfing pals U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and President Donald Trump will host a joint golf event fundraiser next month to raise money ahead of what is anticipated to be a bitterly fought 2026 midterm election cycle.
Dubbed the “Trump Graham Golf Classic,” the event will be held at an undisclosed Florida location — likely a Trump property — with an expected lineup of who’s-who from the Republican donor class.
Similar fundraisers at Trump properties in the past — like a West Palm Beach golf event in 2021 — commanded an entry fee of $25,000, while the second iteration of the pair’s paid outing in Bedminster, N.J., in 2022 commanded a similar admission price.
While expectations for a projected fundraising haul from the November event are unclear, Team Graham says it is “hoping for a decent turnout.”
“It is going to be a big, big event,” Graham said in a statement. “It will not only help me tremendously, but it will help others who support President Trump.”
If anyone needs the money, it isn’t Graham.
With more than $18.7 million raised since his re-election in 2020, Graham currently ranks as Congress’ fourth-strongest Republican fundraiser on the ballot next year, and the most formidable Republican by some $6.2 million over the closest runner-up, Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty.
He also currently has some $14.5 million in the bank, according to his most recent disclosures with the Federal Elections Commission.
And even with a comparatively paltry half-million dollars raised in the third quarter of 2025, Graham remains the only South Carolina Republican in the race for U.S. Senate with any fundraising momentum.
The current S.C. Senate race picture looks like:
Despite contributing $5 million of his own money to defeat Graham, Upstate furniture salesman Mark Lynch spent nearly three times the quarter-million dollars he raised for the quarter, and remains a distant contender in both recent public polling and in his own internals shared with conservative media.
Project 2025 co-author Paul Dans raised just under $166,000 last quarter, and currently has $44,000 more in debts than he has cash on-hand.
Annie Andrews, the race’s leading Democrat, raised $1.57 million last quarter, ending the period with roughly $1.2 million in the bank.
Other declared Republican candidates, such as retired Navy veteran Thomas Murphy, have no visible campaign infrastructure to speak of and have not formally registered with the Federal Elections Commission at all.
The Republican National Committee, which will share the proceeds of the event with Graham and Trump’s campaign committees, is sitting pretty as well, outraising their Democratic counterparts by roughly $32 million since January 1 while maintaining a roughly $69 million cash on-hand advantage.
The success has been somewhat uneven.
The National Republican Senate Committee, which raised some $59.5 million this year, has been bleeding cash, and currently has approximately half the amount of money in its coffers Graham currently has for his own campaign.
Despite being outraised by their Republican counterparts to the tune of $8 million this year, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee currently has some $12.2 million in the bank at a time the party is eyeing potential flip opportunities in states like Maine, North Carolina and Ohio alongside must-defend seats in the battlegrounds of Georgia and Michigan.
