Lindsey Graham spent 31 years in Congress, rubbed elbows with presidents, flew around the world on taxpayer-funded trips, and somehow managed to leave this earth with a net worth that your average retired dentist would find underwhelming.
As Trending Politics reported, Graham's final estimated net worth clocked in at roughly $1.4 million based on financial disclosure forms he filed in May. The range sat between just over $600,000 on the low end and slightly more than $2.2 million on the high end. That placed him 294th in wealth out of the 535 voting members of Congress, which is a polite way of saying more than half of his colleagues had fatter wallets.
To put that in perspective, Fidelity estimates that Americans between 65 and 74 have an average net worth of about $1.79 million. So a man who spent three decades at the highest levels of American government couldn't even keep pace with the national average for his age group. You almost have to respect it. In a town where members of Congress seem to develop supernatural stock-picking abilities the moment they get sworn in, Graham kept nearly all of his investments in mutual funds and U.S. government bonds. No suspicious trades, no perfectly timed options plays, no "my broker just happened to buy pharmaceutical stocks the day before a pandemic announcement" situations.
As a senator, Graham earned $174,000 a year. Not bad, but not exactly private island money either.
Graham's backstory makes the modest finances less surprising. He grew up in Central, South Carolina, living with his parents and younger sister in a small room attached to the family restaurant before they moved into a mobile home. His law school roommate Warren Mowry summed it up in 2015: "It's not a log cabin like Abe Lincoln, but he grew up in a mobile home, which is South Carolina's equivalent of it, I guess."
Life hit Graham hard early. Both of his parents died within a short period after he left for college, leaving the 22-year-old to raise his 13-year-old sister. He was also an Air Force veteran and the first member of his family to attend college.
Graham died at 71 on a Saturday night following what his office described as a "brief and sudden illness" after returning from a trip to Ukraine. The D.C. medical examiner's office said preliminary findings indicated he died from an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Final toxicology and microscopic testing are still pending.
According to a source close to the lawmaker, Graham joked shortly before his death: "I can't die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization."
Say what you want about the man's politics, but spending 31 years in Washington and walking away with a net worth that wouldn't even cover a nice house in the D.C. suburbs is either a sign of remarkable integrity or a sign that he was terrible at being corrupt. Either way, it puts a whole lot of his colleagues to shame.
Read more breaking news stories at: Trending Politics News
