Brad Dayspring helps shape the GOP�s message as communications director for Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, chair of the Republican Study Committee. From a mobile home to Yale University and Georgetown Law, Jaime … Mr. Harrison lived in a trailer as a kid, and recalls scrounging for change to buy gas and eating cereal with water because his grandparents couldn’t afford milk. Stay informed about the latest scientific discoveries & breakthroughs. “It was like they moved from the ’hood to Beverly Hills,” Stewart said. “I’d love to serve in Congress, but I’d also love to help change South Carolina.”. “I’ve talked to people. As the right-hand woman for Rep. John Dingell on all matters atmospheric, she will be at the center of climate change. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE “When he took my mom and dad to the house, they just cried like babies,” said Stewart, Harrison’s mom. Harrison, now 32, was born almost exactly eight years after the massacre to a 15-year-old mother and her high school boyfriend. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Democrat Jaime Harrison is spending a million dollars a week to buy a Senate seat. Jaime Harrison is used to being an underdog. If Harrison does win, it would be historic, making South Carolina the first to have two Black senators serving at the same time. He was born to a teenage mother and raised by his grandparents. contact customer service Clyburn and his contemporaries had unlocked the doors that Harrison, 30 years later, would burst through. Picnicking at Edisto Memorial Gardens in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Diron Stephens and Valarie Waymer say that Jaime Harrison's unlikely run for the U.S. Senate has put his small hometown in the political spotlight. Cracks in Biden’s ‘firewall’? For some, politicians were forever cast as scandalous and scheming. Those who want Graham gone haven't been shy about helping Harrison fund his campaign. To Jaime Harrison, character always matters, hard work is in his bones, doing what’s right is a way of life, and making good on his debt of gratitude to South Carolina is a lifelong commitment. In a recent op-ed , he said he’s felt racism his whole life, since listening to his grandmother’s stories of huddling with family while the Ku Klux Klan marched by. People on the left were saying it wasn’t tough enough. On the social front, he excelled, transcending boundaries of race and background to cultivate friends in all areas of the university. Mike VanBreyer is another voter in Charleston. “It shook me hard.” Rookie Democratic candidate Jaime Harrison, a Black American raised by grandparents who didn’t get past eighth grade, has improbably pulled even with GOP titan Lindsey Graham in some polls on promises to address economic and racial inequity in his home state of South Carolina. We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough. HANSEN: Harrison earned a scholarship to Yale, came back to his community to teach and became the first African American to chair the South Carolina Democratic Party. Much of the money has come from small donors online, although Graham says big-money Democrats are also after him. He has the added credibility of roots in a South Carolina town of 13,000, where he experienced such challenges firsthand, yet developed the vision to see potential where others might see only economic blight and persistent racial inequity. Most days, he works on the floor of the House of Representatives, directing Clyburn’s floor staff and conferring with members of Congress to make sure Democrats have enough votes to pass key legislation. For anyone doubting that opportunity still exists in America, there is the story of Jaime Harrison. You don’t have a Christian Science Monitor With his father gone and his mother often in Atlanta, Harrison was raised by his grandparents. After college, Harrison returned to Orangeburg to teach at his old high school for a year, where he lavished special attention on promising young black men grasping for role models. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. He says he's running for the U.S. Senate because Lindsey Graham is out of touch with the state's needs. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is seeking a fourth term but is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Democrat Jaime Harrison. He first made the local news at age 5 when he won a drawing competition with a sketch of an old grist mill. “Boy, why you screaming?” As Democrats try to win seats in the Senate, they are rooting for Jaime Harrison in South Carolina. Now, if Mr. Harrison wins, he’d join Republican Sen. Tim Scott in Washington – making South Carolina the first state whose U.S. senators are both Black. When the foreclosure happened — he said it was the result of fraud — Harrison made a promise to himself that if he ever made any money, he would buy his grandparents a house. “He was just different. I got in!” he hollered, leaping into the air at the curb. “It’s an American story that I think the country needs right now,” says a GOP colleague who worked with him in Congress and asked not to be identified by name. He lived in a trailer as a kid, and recalls eating cereal with water because his grandparents couldn’t afford milk. While McCaskill is boisterous and outgoing, her chief of staff is the sobering gut check. “I just don’t understand how Lindsey Graham can lose this race,” says Mr. Woodard, a Republican consultant who helped him win his first congressional race in 1994. As Republicans cling to a narrow three-seat majority in the Senate, the race has taken on national implications, with Mr. Harrison attracting more money from July to September than a Senate candidate has ever raised in a single quarter. HANSEN: Meanwhile, Harrison has focused much of his campaign on pocketbook issues as he did during this virtual town hall with young people. Ms. Burgess’ friend Ashley Hart, who grew up listening to stories of the Orangeburg Massacre, says she has also come to see that her “white sisters” have more in common with her than she realized. His grandmother, who was 38 when he was born, had unfulfilled dreams of being a nurse. “I’m the son of a teen mom, I was raised by grandparents with a fourth-grade and an eighth-grade education. There, he quickly developed a diverse set of friends, including freshman roommate David Drewes, a white Long Islander whom he ended up living with all four years. My grandparents didn't have much, but they raised me right, taught me what most South Carolinians know. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. As floor director for House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), Jaime Harrison keeps tabs on how members of Congress plan to vote on legislation. “I got into Yale!” He ran back up the path and described to her what the letter said. Paid for by the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE (202) 863-8000. Neil Bradley, top policy aide to House Minority Whip Roy Blunt. Some Orangeburg, South Carolina, storefronts, like this one where Senate candidate Jaime Harrison called bingo in his teens, may be boarded up, but Mr. Harrison says he sees hope where others see blight. At first glance, Orangeburg may seem the unlikeliest of places to produce Lindsey Graham’s first real Democratic challenger since he was elected to Congress a quarter century ago. JC Duncan, a Black 50-something resident, says he has never voted: “I take what God gives me.”, A white Orangeburg resident working on his yard, who did not give his name, says Mr. Harrison’s lobbying background is a deal-breaker. “She knew it was something that was really important to me,” he recalled. Accepted. Mr. Harrison isn’t the only one pinching himself. A weekly digest of Monitor views and insightful commentary on major events. �When you do humanize this, it�s not just political," says Nabors. After all, the Republican senator is also an American success story – the son of pool hall owners, the first in his family to go to college, and now the powerful head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which could usher in a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He never wanted them to relive the embarrassment of the foreclosure.