Paul Dans makes a Senate bid

Roughly 60 people attended an October silent auction hosted by the York County Reaganites in Tega Cay, S.C. They came to bid on a range of Trump-themed items, like whiskey kits and patriotic paintings. While few knew the Republican speaker headlining the event, all were familiar with his work: Project 2025. His next goal is “Project 2026”: ousting 22-year incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham.

From his home in Charleston, Paul Dans says he is running the only viable campaign against the longtime GOP senator. An October Quantus Insights poll found Graham has a strong lead, with some 58% of Republican primary voters supporting him or leaning his direction. In second place, Greenville businessman Mark Lynch had roughly 15% support, while Dans trails at a mere 7%. Still, around 20% of Republican voters are undecided about the 2026 midterms, according to Quantus. That leaves potential room for a strong rival in next June’s Republican primary.

Dans hopes to claim that mantle. Designing Project 2025—a Heritage Foundation initiative offering policy recommendations for the second Trump administration—gave him name recognition. He is styling himself as the pro-Trump candidate, the man who can provide the president a consistent yes vote in Washington to drain the swamp.

The problem is that Trump already has a yes vote from South Carolina: Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“He is always there when I need him, and I hope everyone in the Great State of South Carolina will help Lindsey have a BIG WIN in his re-election bid next year,” Trump posted on Truth Social in March. Dans is undeterred.

“I think Donald Trump implicitly endorses me every day,” Dans told the crowd in Tega Cay, reading from a list of Project 2025 recommendations that the Trump administration has implemented.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Md., Paul Dans has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in urban planning from MIT. He was president of the Federalist Society at the University of Virginia Law School, practiced law in New York City, and then moved to the nation’s capital in 2019. He worked eight months as a senior adviser in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and then moved over to the Office of Personnel Management until Trump left office.

In 2021, Dans joined the Heritage Foundation, headquartered on Capitol Hill, while commuting from South Carolina, where he’s lived since 2018, he says, and bought two homes by 2022.

The Dans campaign slogan is “God, family, country.” An unmentioned fourth could be Trump. Dans supported Trump’s political ambitions early on, stumped for him in swing states before Trump’s first election, and has never left the bandwagon.

During the 2024 campaign, when Democrats denounced Project 2025 as a radical conservative plan for America, Trump publicly repudiated the policy blueprint, saying he had never read it. Shortly after, Dans stepped down from the Heritage project. Since then, the Trump White House has implemented around half of Project 2025’s recommendations.

Dans told me he doesn’t know if the president truly understands how much he’s done to advance administration policy priorities. “He does love my work, though.” Dans said. “Every day, a Project 2025 angel gets his wings.”

Dans criticized current Republican senators as being less than fully committed to Trump’s agenda. He lambasted the group for not working a full five-day week and failing to pass a majority of executive nominees despite Democratic blockades.

He specifically accused Graham of being swayed by self-interest. He pointed to Graham’s 2015 opposition to Trump, his broken promise to serve no more than 12 years, and his super PAC campaign funding.

Asked whether he would commit to a term limit himself, Dans demurred but said he would not serve four terms: “Let’s get one under the belt and make sure the good people of South Carolina want to send me back.”

He also said he might accept super PAC funding but would not be obligated to special interests. Dans said his humility and faith would protect him from doing the bidding of his major donors or becoming another swamp creature. Dans grew up Catholic but now attends an Anglican church. He does not identify exclusively with either tradition but said he reads the Bible daily. He draws from the Ephesians 6 imagery of putting on the armor of God to guide his actions.

“I pray, and I have humility to have respect for the common man,” Dans said. “I’ve been given certain gifts, and I’m always going to stand up and speak for people and speak my own mind.”

A mug with an image of Trump and Dans sits on Dans’ desk. Francis Chung / Politico via AP

Dans certainly speaks his mind about Graham. He calls him “bloodthirsty,” “deranged,” and “fixated on violence” when it comes to foreign policy. And Dans, a husband and father of four children, derides his opponent’s lifelong bachelorhood, claiming he’s “committing other people’s children to endless war. … He has no passion for actually addressing today’s issues because he has no stake in tomorrow’s future.”

Finally, Dans frames the president’s support of Graham as a political play, pointing out that the endorsement came only after Graham and other Senate Republicans passed the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is projected to add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit in the next decade.

“They loaded it all up with their Democrat friends’ pork,” Dans said. “Sen. Graham extorted in the middle of it an endorsement from President Trump. That sort of quid pro quo, we can’t take it anymore.”

For his part, Graham has not responded to the rhetorical attacks from Dans. And he has little incentive to do so, given his solid lead in the polls and endorsements from Trump, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Dans’ former boss. Graham is a well-known defense hawk in the Senate, advocating for interventionist policies in war zones like Ukraine and Israel, and he chairs the budget committee.

However, when I reached out to Graham’s office to get a reaction to Dans’ claims, campaign press secretary Abby Zilch did respond to one of them.

“It’s shocking that someone would suggest that President Trump’s endorsement of Senator Graham is phony and corrupt,” Zilch wrote. “Desperation surrounded by lies never plays well in South Carolina.”

Back in Tega Cay, attendees listened to Dans’ stump speech and occasionally chuckled at his phrases. But the biggest cheers of the night were for President Trump, whose name and actions Dans frequently invoked.

Trump was there, too, attracting selfie-takers. But the 47th president attended only in cardboard cutout form.

—with reporting in South Carolina from Tatton Strassheim