Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, once thought to be among the Republican incumbents most vulnerable to a Tea Party challenge this year, easily dispatched six primary opponents on Tuesday, capturing well over 50 percent of the vote and avoiding a runoff.
Mr. Graham’s victory — on the same day the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, lost his primary in Virginia — illustrates the strategies that establishment-aligned Republican candidates can use to fend off hard-liners this year. Mr. Graham prepared for his seemingly inevitable primary challenge years in advance, recognizing that his frequent deviations from party orthodoxy would make him a prime target on the right.
He has been hammered by conservative hard-liners in South Carolina, and across the nation, for being an outspoken advocate for an immigration overhaul and for voting to confirm both of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees. But he stockpiled $9.4 million for his re-election, and well before the campaign got underway, he worked to ensure that his biggest potential rivals stayed out of the primary race.
He has saturated the South Carolina airwaves with commercials highlighting his record. He also has gone to great lengths to highlight his hawkish views on national security issues.
It was the sort of aggressiveness mirrored by other Republican senators who turned back conservative primary challenges from the right this year, like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas. And it was a notably different approach from the one used by Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who is now in a runoff with a hard-line conservative in a race that will be settled on June 24.
There is considerable unease with Mr. Graham among some of South Carolina’s most ideologically driven Republicans, but none of his underfinanced and little-known opponents were able to take advantage of that discomfort to mount a formidable challenge.