Don’t sleep on this “attractive nice lady”
  July 14, 2026 Dearest Meteor readers, Word on the street is that cigarettes are back in vogue, a trend corroborated by their unusually strong presence among the guests at my birthday party last weekend. (I turn 42 tomorrow!) Pray for me and my commitment to nicotine gum, please.  Today, we’re (re)introducing you to Dr. Annie Andrews, the Senate candidate who’s been pushed into the spotlight after Lindsey Graham’s death. Plus, a long-overdue payday for E. Jean Carroll. And, wash those greens! Keeping Nicorette in business, Nona Willis Aronowitz  WHAT’S GOING ONAll eyes on Dr. Annie: So, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) died this weekend. His sudden demise makes it an excellent time to both review his horrendously anti-women, anti-LGBTQ+ record, and to take a closer look at the woman who had been vying for his seat: Dr. Annie Andrews, who would be the first pediatrician and woman doctor in the U.S. Senate if elected. We’ve had our eye on Andrews for a while, ever since she first announced her plans to run for Graham’s seat last spring. Clad in a white coat and stethoscope, she pointedly showed x-rays of children with measles pneumonia (“a condition easily prevented by vaccines”) and cancer (“one of the diseases the NIH doesn’t have the funding to study anymore”). South Carolina’s measles outbreak this winter only made the issue, and her background, more relevant. “I never in a million years, when I was in medical school, thought that I would be running for the U.S. Senate and also talking about measles nearly every single day,” Andrews told The 19th back in February. Graham had been dismissive of Andrews, telling reporters she was an “attractive nice lady with a couple of kids, but we don’t know what she believes in.” But Andrews has made it quite clear what she believes in (and FYI, she has three kids). “I believe that healthcare is a human right,” she told her supporters after winning her primary last month, and “that if you couldn’t pass a pop quiz about women’s reproductive anatomy, you shouldn’t have anything to do with writing laws about what a woman does with her own body.” She also called for impeaching and removing health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; fighting against Medicaid and Medicare cuts; fully funding the NIH and CDC, which have withered under RFK, Jr.’s tenure; and passing gun laws that protect kids. She’s the kind of candidate we desperately need more of, in an era of vaccine hesitancy and the rise of MAHA.  THE LAB COAT IS A NICE TOUCH, TBH. (VIA YOUTUBE)All that said, Andrews was facing an uphill battle in a deep-red state where Graham won by double digits in 2020. But Graham’s death has scrambled the state’s election dynamics in a year that was already very, very bad for Republicans. Jalisa Washington-Price, a political strategist and senior advisor to the Harris-Walz campaign (and a South Carolina native), says that Andrews, who had already pulled closer to Graham in some polls, may have a chance in a year that has had little tolerance for “business as usual.” South Carolina and the region in general are experiencing a “political awakening,” she says, especially after the Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act and the subsequent fight in South Carolina over a recent Trump-led redistricting effort (which eventually failed). South Carolina Republicans have also been attempting to further eviscerate reproductive rights with a law making its way through the state legislature that would explicitly sentence women who’ve had abortions to prison time. Andrews has been part of the pushback to that law, which she has called “barbaric” and part of an “anti-science, anti-family, anti-woman agenda.” “It’s still South Carolina,” Washington-Price says, “but people are feeling really optimistic about her chances.” In the meantime, there’s also the question of who, exactly, Andrews will face in November: Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, has been appointed to fill his spot, but Washington-Price says it’s unlikely she’ll end up being Andrews’ challenger. She predicts that Republicans will pick a candidate who’s “Lindsey Graham-lite”—and that’s not, she says, what voters want. (Let’s hope for Andrews’ sanity that her challenger is not Nancy Mace, whose anti-trans crusade caused Andrews to leave her job as a doctor back in 2022.) Even if the electoral landscape has changed, Andrews is still staring down a huge challenge, both politically and tonally. It’s tough to campaign against the memory of a beloved person who just died. But Washington-Price doesn’t think Andrews will make any major pivots. Andrews confirmed as much to The New York Times yesterday: “The problems South Carolinians are facing,” she said, “have not changed over the weekend.” AND:
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