Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford on Thursday jumped into the growing Republican special election primary for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s seat. 

Sanford, who served two separate stints in the House representing South Carolina’s 1st District, briefly ran for his old Charleston-centered seat this year before dropping out to establish a nonprofit to focus on the national debt. 

In his launch video, Sanford cites addressing rising government spending as a reason for his run.

“Our ability to afford things, inflation and the way people struggle to build a life are but symptoms of spending beyond our means as a country,” he says. “We’re at a tipping point.”

Sanford is the latest entrant into the race to replace Graham on the ballot. The longtime senator was running for a fifth term when he died unexpectedly earlier this month from an aortic tear caused by cardiovascular disease, according to preliminary medical findings. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, to fill the seat for the rest of his term, which expires early next year.

Darline Graham announced this week that she would seek a full Senate term, after President Donald Trump encouraged her to run. But her candidacy with the president’s support has not kept other Republicans from the race. A pair of House members, Russell Fry and Ralph Norman, businessman Mark Lynch, who lost last month’s primary to Lindsey Graham, and attorney Duke Buckner, a former House hopeful, are also vying for the GOP nod.

The filing period ends Tuesday, the same day as Graham’s funeral in Washington. 

After that, the candidates will sprint to an Aug. 11 primary, with a runoff election between the top two finishers scheduled for Aug. 25 if no one receives a majority of the vote. The winner will face the Democratic nominee, pediatrician Annie Andrews, in November.

While several of the other GOP candidates, including Fry and Norman, have aligned themselves with Trump’s MAGA movement, Sanford occupies a different lane in Republican politics. His brand of conservatism is rooted in reigning in spending and addressing the deficit.

From 1995 through 2001, and then again from 2013 through 2019, Sanford represented South Carolina’s 1st District in the House. In between, he led the Palmetto State as governor for two terms, gaining national notoriety in 2009 following revelations that he secretly traveled to Argentina to meet a woman with whom he’d been having an affair. Sanford’s office initially said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Sanford launched a presidential campaign in September 2019, positioning himself as a deficit hawk and a counter to Trump. But he exited the race just two months later, saying impeachment proceedings against Trump were dominating public attention and making it difficult to draw focus to his message of fiscal restraint.

In his latest video, Sanford strikes a wistful note. Graham’s death, along with his own father’s diagnosis with ALS when Sanford was in high school, serve as reminders “of how short and precious life is,’’ he says.

“This notion of all of us having just a little time has always hit me hard,’’ he says. “We’re stewards of our lives and the things that we love for just a short time.”