Topline
The former director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, launched a Senate race against longtime incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Monday, saying he wants to bring Project 2025’s controversial right-wing agenda to the Senate—and becoming one of several further-right candidates now challenging latter-day Trump ally Graham.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks to the press at the U.S. Capitol on February 11.
Dans will run in the Senate GOP primary in South Carolina in 2026, when Graham faces reelection, and told the Associated Press Project 2025’s aim was to “really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era,” and “If you look at where the chokepoint is, it’s the United States Senate.”
Dans served as an attorney in President Donald Trump’s first administration before leading Project 2025 until July 2024, when he stepped down from the program as it came under greater scrutiny and was publicly admonished by the Trump campaign.
He has remained supportive of Project 2025’s agenda—a far-right plan that sought to broadly overhaul the executive branch—telling Politico in March he believed the Trump administration’s implementation of many of Project 2025’s ideas was “beyond my wildest dreams.”
Graham is a longtime senator who, while previously known as more of a centrist—and Trump critic—has become a staunch Trump advocate, and has already won the president’s endorsement in his 2026 reelection bid.
Dans is now the second major GOP candidate to challenge Graham from the right, however, after former South Carolina Lt. Gov. André Bauer launched a bid against Graham earlier in July, telling the AP he did not believe Graham was conservative enough and has “been [in the Senate] too long, and he votes like it.”
Dans is expected to formally announce his candidacy Wednesday, according to the AP. It remains to be seen if he will be able to secure major endorsements in the race, with Graham already shoring up support from key conservatives like Trump, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster. Dans told the AP he expects to receive backing from Project 2025 allies and Republicans who have grown tired of Graham, but has not named any specific endorsements.
This will be Dans’ first run for public office, according to the Charleston Post and Courier.
Graham’s Senate race is one of dozens taking place in 2026 as senators across the country fight for reelection, though only a few are expected to be competitive. Among those that will be most closely watched are races in the swing states of Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina, where Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper launched a bid Monday to replace outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis. Graham’s race in South Carolina has so far not been considered to be particularly competitive, given the state’s history of voting firmly in favor of Republican candidates, though it remains to be seen if the primary election could become competitive.
Project 2025 is a multi-pronged agenda spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation before the 2024 election, in which a coalition of conservative groups created a vast blueprint for the next conservative president, namely Trump. While the centerpiece of Project 2025 was its 900-page collection of policy proposals, it also included a LinkedIn-style database of potential federal employees, training materials for prospective executive branch staffers and a roadmap for the first months of Trump’s term. The policy agenda was released in 2023 but became highly controversial in the months before the 2024 election, as Democrats highlighted its far-right policy proposals as a key reason to vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 as a result, claiming he has “nothing to do with them” and calling some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” The president has gone on to implement many ideas referenced in Project 2025 through executive orders, however.
Graham was initially a major Trump critic—telling CNN in 2015 that the only way to “make America great again” was to “tell Donald Trump to go to hell”—and had more of a reputation for being a political moderate, becoming known as one of the “three amigos” with the late Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., a frequent Trump critic, and Democrat Joe Lieberman, Conn. He has quickly evolved into a key supporter of the president and his agenda, however, with Trump saying in March that the senator “has been a wonderful friend to me, and has always been there when I needed him.” The South Carolina lawmaker has served in the Senate since 2003, and has avoided major political skirmishes during his past reelection bids, handily beating largely-unknown Republican challengers in 2008, 2014 and 2020.