Project 2025 author to challenge Lindsey Graham in GOP primary for his South Carolina Senate seat

A head architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is set to challenge South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in the 2026 Senate GOP primary race.

Paul Dans, an attorney who worked in the first Trump administration as White House liaison to the Office of Personnel Management, is planning to formally announce his campaign at a prayer breakfast followed by a kick-off event Wednesday in Charleston, The Associated Press reported.

While Dans told the AP that President Trump’s federal workforce and funding cuts are what he had hoped for when drafting Project 2025, there is still “more work to do.”

“What we’ve done with Project 2025 is really change the game in terms of closing the door on the progressive era,” Dans said. ”If you look at where the chokepoint is, it’s the United States Senate. That’s the headwaters of the swamp.”

He added that Graham has spent most of his career in Washington, D.C., and “it’s time to show him the door.”

Graham’s senior campaign adviser who co-managed Trump’s 2024 bid, Chris LaCivita, told the news wire that Dans’ campaign would “end prematurely.”

“After being unceremoniously dumped in 2024 while trying to torpedo Donald Trump’s historic campaign, Paul Dans has parachuted himself into the state of South Carolina in direct opposition to President Trump’s longtime friend and ally in the Senate, Lindsey Graham,” LaCivita said.

Trump has already endorsed Graham in the GOP primary race, which now includes former South Carolina Lt. Gov. André Bauer and local businessman Mark Lynch.

After Trump’s first term, Dans went to work at the Heritage Foundation, which he left in July 2024, as Project 2025 was facing blowback. Democrats had zeroed in on Project 2025 last summer, claiming it was Trump’s agenda for his second term. However, Trump distanced himself from the agenda proposal, insisting it had nothing to do with his own “Agenda 47.”