Di Vino Rosso is one of the few political watering holes in Columbia, South Carolina. It’s popular in its own right thanks to a Michelin recommendation last year and the kinds of bartenders who convince you they’re pouring drinks out of friendship, not economic necessity. It’s frequented by state senators, congressional staffers of the 2nd and 6th districts, and their benefactors. It’s where you take a cohort of soon to depart home-office interns to feel special. It has Instagram-forward warm lighting; it feels like you’re n+1 drinks deep as you cross the threshold. It’s nominally Italian and devoid of Italians.
In April, before the primary, before his death, an acquaintance in one of the nearby congressional district offices told me that Lindsey Graham was in town during a recess and would be dining at Di Vino that Saturday. I called to reserve two bar seats with the intent of staking out the Senator. It’s imperative in life to have friends who are reliably in collared shirts and looking for an excuse to drop $200 on short notice. My buddy Benton from the Army was there about an hour and a half later, clad in Rhoback.
Columbia is like most state capitals in that it’s second rate. It’s called the armpit of the state by anyone who didn’t graduate from UofSC (USC being a litigated trademark by a school in California). The term “armpit” is somewhat about the quality, but it’s topographical as much as anything else. Columbia is an urban heat island at the confluence of the Broad and Saluda Rivers. It’s rainier, muggier, everything-er, than 10 miles in any direction. You can’t step outside there without looking wet. Benton was conspicuously not water logged and I thought about ordering the same shirt he was wearing. Graham wasn’t there when Benton sat down, which he noted loudly, gesticulating, asking “where’s Queen Lindsey?”
We were tucked on the side of the bar that put the entrance to our back, unable to see if Graham was entering. Every time the tall blonde hostess greeted someone, Benton turned around like a dog who just smelled a cat. This was eight weeks or so before the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary, eight weeks before Nancy Mace got clobbered, but Benton was airing out some prescience describing how badly she would lose. “She can’t win; she’s a Citadel nepo baby. Her dad was the commandant of the school.” He started to drop a lot of buzz words you hear different military school grads use like “knob” and “plebe” to describe people’s years or hazing rituals that happened during them. I turned things to my own Nancy Mace anecdote before I zoned out.
Our mutual friend Jack’s National Guard unit was one of the ones sent to DC last year. Jack’s the kind of guy who always ends up being the face of an organization. He won cop of the year for his department. He got TikTok-famous during Ranger school somehow. I’ve twice seen Jack’s face show up in New York Times stories covering the DC mobilization. I probably missed some others. The camera, even the body camera, is drawn to him. When he was in DC, the brass showed Vance and Hegseth around their facilities, but everybody else was liaised by Jack. Nancy Mace came by for a photo-op and Jack had to show her around to the different patrol locations.
Jack told me that “when she showed up she said ‘You guys tackle anybody yet?’ She laughed at her own joke and then asked if we wanted a picture. So then we went to the next group of soldiers and she goes ‘You guys tackled anybody yet? Hahaha. You guys want to get a picture?’ Yeah, so after about four rounds of that she decides she got the pictures she needed and calls an Uber. While she’s waiting for the Uber she just stared at her phone while the soldiers tried to ask her questions and she just sort of grunted and said ‘uh, yeah’ to whatever they asked.”
Benton had already heard this story from Jack and we agreed that Mace would probably lose and that it’s weird to see your friends’ faces in papers of record. It was nearing half past eight and Lindsey hadn’t shown. He never seemed like a post-8:30 p.m. dinner guy, so in my head, I gave up.
We talked for a while about Graham and I tried to juxtapose Strom Thurmond and how two impregnable Senators from the same state could be so different. South Carolina seems more doomed than other states to despise its politicians, but many men above 50 here still perk up when somebody says the name “Strom.” They’ll try to do the Strom Thurmond impression at boozy parties, even though most people don’t know what he sounded like anymore. If you give a little nudge back at the halcyon longing for the Thurmond days — insinuate that it’s troubling for a Senator to have been pro-segregation and have a secret mixed-race child — the Thurmond-heads chuckle and say “that’s ole Strom.” As though secret families are just the cost of doing business. For most people my age here Strom Thurmond is just a weird building at Clemson, at best a vaguely familiar name, like that of a lesser Old Testament King imprinted on you during your Sunday School days.
We left without seeing Graham, agreeing to try again sometime soon. The bartenders didn’t charge us for most of the martinis we drank. I’m fairly certain they actually did think of us as their friends.
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