Bachelor Lindsey Graham promises a 'rotating first lady'

Unmarried Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says that if he becomes president, he will have a “rotating first lady.”

“Well, I’ve got a sister. She could play that role if necessary,” the 59-year-old South Carolinian presidential hopeful told the Daily Mail Online in an interview published Tuesday. “I’ve got a lot of friends. We’ll have a rotating first lady,” he added.


His sister, Darline Graham Nordone, resides in South Carolina with her husband and her two daughters from previous marriages, suggesting that she would not be able to be in Washington all the time.

Historically, in the absence of a FLOTUS, daughters, sisters and other female relatives have filled the role.

Graham would be the first unmarried man in the presidency since Woodrow Wilson, whose first wife, Ellen, died in 1914, a year into his term. (In 1915, Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt, who assumed an important role in the executive branch when her husband had a severe stroke in 1919.)

There have been only two presidents who were never married when taking the oath of office: James Buchanan and Grover Cleveland. The 49-year-old Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom in 1886 while in office; Buchanan remained a bachelor.

Buchanan’s niece, Harriet Lane, was effectively his first lady and became a popular and powerful Washington socialite.

Thomas Jefferson was previously married to Martha Wayles Skelton, but she died nearly 20 years before he entered the White House and he never remarried.

As for Graham, regardless of who would perform the ceremonial hosting duties, he promised to invite his former congressional colleagues and their families down Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I’m a social kind of guy,” Graham said. “I think one of the biggest mistakes President Obama made was being a little too distant.”