Major poll moves South Carolina's shockingly competitive US Senate race to 'toss up'

One of the biggest shockers of the 2020 election is how well Democrat Jaime Harrison has been performing in South Carolina's U.S. Senate race. And now, the Cook Political Report is describing that race as a "toss up."

When Harrison entered the race and challenged incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham — who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee — the word "longshot" was used a great deal. South Carolina is a deep red state — redder, in fact, than its neighbor, North Carolina, which has evolved into a swing state. Graham was expecting to win reelection election, but some recent polls have shown the South Carolina race to be a dead heat.

Cook's Jessica Taylor quotes a GOP strategist in South Carolina as saying, "It's a jump ball at this point. Jaime is peaking at exactly the right time and he's got a deluge of money. (Harrison) is blocking every pass there is from Republicans."

Donations for the 44-year-old Harrison have been pouring in from Democrats all over the United States, and Graham has been on GOP-friendly Fox News sounding the alarm about how aggressive Harrison's fundraising has turned out to be.

Taylor notes, "Graham's hardly hiding his worry either. Just before the close of the third quarter fundraising books, he repeatedly appeared on Fox News shows to plead for cash, repeating his website and complaining he was being swamped by out of state money by liberals who hate him. It's true — Graham has put himself in far more of a national lightning rod role than he ever was when he was the late Sen. John McCain's sidekick."

Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman and Never Trump conservative who co-hosts MSNBC's "Morning Joe," has slammed Graham for going from being "John McCain's wing man in the U.S. Senate to Donald Trump's carnival barker." And Scarborough has repeatedly noted that as vehemently as Graham lambasted Trump in 2016, he is not one of Trump's most obsequious sycophants — a fact that obviously isn't lost on all the Democrats who have been donating to Harrison's campaign.

Taylor observes, "Now, the Senate Leadership Fund has come in to help bail Graham out to the tune of $10 million so far spent or reserved through Election Day. The fact that they're also spending in Kansas, another usually ruby-red state at the federal level, shows how truly in danger the GOP's Senate majority is."