Beloved or not, Lindsey Graham was a critical dealmaker in Congress

When Democrats and Republicans were earlier this year locked in a standoff that had plunged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the longest partial government shutdown in US history, news of a path forward emerged in the form of a statement from Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

By announcing that the budget committee he chairs would set to work on a measure to fund the agencies leading Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign for the remainder of his presidency, Graham played a major role in rallying the GOP behind a plan that reopened DHS.

It was a familiar role for Graham, whose office announced he had died on Saturday at the age of 71 after “a brief and sudden illness”. During his 23 years as senator for South Carolina, Graham developed a reputation as a dealmaker, appearing in the midst of critical negotiations with the Democratic opposition and members of his own party. It was a role he continued in the age of Trump, a leader Graham supported even if he had reservations with his approach to foreign policy.

“Lindsey was part of every important policy issue and an indispensable player in every Senate ‘gang’,” said Dick Durbin, the number two Senate Democrat. “He was a fierce Republican partisan one day and a key bipartisan ally the next.”

In the public eye, Graham’s reputation as the former often outshined the latter. While he would take part in negotiations with Democrats, he rarely went as far as to buck the White House when it had an occupant from his party. After gaining national renown for harshly criticizing Trump during the 2016 election then transforming into a supporter, Graham was a key player in the Senate Republicans’ failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and took part in Trump’s attempts to prevent Joe Biden from assuming office after the 2020 election.

But his career was marked by repeated instances of working across the aisle to resolve thorny legislative issues, with varying degrees of success.

Graham, who served four terms in the House of Representatives before winning election to the Senate in 2002, was a lifelong foreign policy hawk. During the presidency of George W Bush, he was a neoconservative at a time when the ideology was at its most popular, supporting the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and of the use of Guantánamo Bay to house detainees from the war on terror.

Yet under the same administration, he became a negotiating partner with liberal icon Senator Ted Kennedy and other Democrats on unsuccessful attempts at immigration reform, and was among the “gang of 14” that helped broker a bipartisan compromise over confirming Bush’s judicial nominees.

Early in Barack Obama’s administration, he negotiated with Democrats on an agreement to fight the climate crisis, but the talks broke down. Years later, he joined the “gang of eight”, which made another unsuccessful try at immigration reform.

He voted for the two supreme court justices Obama nominated to the bench, the two put forward by Bush and the three nominated by Trump, but opposed Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson. Even still, he was among the 15 Republicans who in 2022 voted for a package of modest policy changes intended to address gun violence, following a massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

When Trump returned to the White House last year, Graham’s position as chair of the budget committee made him a lead senator on passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which funded much of the president’s domestic priorities.

“I’ll never forget the Senate lunch, when a couple senators were a tad off the program, and Lindsey – in his inimitable way – made sure everyone was onside by the time we left. It was a glorious thing to witness. He knew how to move a room,” said Stephen Miller, the influential White House deputy chief of staff.

And while some Republicans blanched at Trump’s decision to attack Iran without seeking congressional authorization, Graham cheered the campaign as well as the commando raid earlier this year that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Yet those same hawkish beliefs led him to work across the aisle on foreign policy priorities that drew less enthusiasm from the White House.

While Trump waffled on supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion, Graham was steadfast in advocating for continued aide, and had returned from visiting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv just before his death. A longtime supporter of the US’s Kurdish allies in Syria, he joined Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal in introducing a bill that would have imposed sanctions on Syria’s government after fighting broke out between the two sides earlier this year.

He was also a backer of Nato despite the president’s own flirtation with undermining the alliance.

“While we disagreed fiercely on many policy issues, he was complicated and could not be pigeonholed,” said Democratic senator Chris Coons, who celebrated Graham’s birthday over dinner last week during the Nato summit in Turkey.

“Several of my most important bills I have passed were with Lindsey, from conservation in Africa to promoting balanced American engagement with fragile states. I will miss having him as a partner in the Senate.”

Graham was doing deals until the end. The day before his death, he was among a bipartisan group of four senators who announced a deal with the Trump administration on a bill to punish countries that buy oil and gas from Russia. The news broke while Graham was in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy said the senator had updated him on the progress personally.

“It is important that our long-range sanctions pressure on Russia be reinforced through new sanctions steps by our partners,” Ukraine’s president wrote following their meeting. “Lindsey briefed me on the work underway in Congress on the relevant bill.”