WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is wielding the gavel in the performance of his political life.

Once a biting critic of President Donald Trump, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman on Monday opens confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett in a bid to seal a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Hanging in the balance could be the future of government health care during a coronavirus pandemic that’s claimed more than 214,000 American lives. And Graham’s own career appears in jeopardy like never before.

For Graham, the Republican Senate majority and Trump himself, the hearings three weeks before Election Day could be a last stand. The proceedings are a display for voters of what it means to control the presidency and the Senate. But they’re also a real-time test of whether that’s enough to counter a jaw-dropping $57 million fundraising haul by Graham’s Democratic opponent in the South Carolina race, Jaime Harrison.

“Senator, how good is your word?” Harrison, 44, asked at a recent debate.

Graham’s answer is complicated by his whipsaw shifts, particularly where Trump is concerned. He’s been both friend and foe of the belligerent president. Now, they play golf. He once vowed to oppose any Supreme Court confirmation hearings in presidential election years. This week, he is chairing Barrett’s, and predicting she’ll be confirmed to the high court this month to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

If so, Barrett, 48, would be one of the nine justices to hear arguments on issues that affect millions of people. One is a Trump administration-backed challenge to the Affordable Care Act that’s expected to come up a week after the election. Other charged topics that could be headed for the high court include abortion, immigration and gay marriage.

With early voting underway in South Carolina and many other states, Graham, 65, mounts the dais confronted with his opponent’s withering fundraising, his own statements as one of the Senate’s most visible members, and Trump’s weak standing against Democrat Joe Biden in the final stretch of the campaign.

“What he’s finding out is in the last four years it’s come back to bite him,” said Danielle Vinson, professor of politics and international affairs at Furman University. “There are lots of people who were familiar with him. He was willing to take on the party. When he changed to support Trump and embrace Trump, I really think it set some people off.”

Harrison’s money doesn’t guarantee he’ll defeat Graham. In the final fundraising period of 2018, Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s $38 million topped the amount raised by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who won their Senate race.

And being a Republican in traditionally conservative South Carolina carries a great deal of weight. The state has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998.

But the days leading up to the Barrett hearings were particularly challenging for Graham. On Friday, during a debate forum with Harrison — who is Black — Graham denied there was systemic racism in South Carolina.

“If you’re a young African American, an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state. You just need to be conservative, not liberal,” Graham said.

Then on Sunday, Harrison’s campaign rocked the political world with its fundraising haul, propelled by contributions from around the country.

The third-quarter amount brings Harrison’s overall fundraising for the campaign to $86 million. Attributing the success to grassroots support, Harrison’s campaign said the $57 million came in the form of 1.5 million donations from 994,000 donors. The average contribution was $37.

Graham, acutely aware that the president won his states by double digits, tried to brush it off.

“There’s not enough money in the world to convince South Carolinians to vote for the radical liberal agenda,” Graham said. But weeks earlier, he’d complained on Fox News that he was “getting killed financially” by Harrison.

What Graham stands for, and who he stands with, has been an issue. From the moment he drops the gavel at Barrett’s hearing Monday, Graham will have broken his own vow to oppose Supreme Court confirmations in presidential election years. He’s called Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot” who “doesn’t have a clue about anything” relating to foreign policy and “doesn’t represent my party.”

He and the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was deeply loathed by Trump, were best friends and often delighted in mocking the president.

Yet Graham, acutely aware that Trump won his state in 2016 by 14 percentage points, has since become the president’s golf-playing buddy and political ally.

It was Graham’s fiery 2018 defense of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that helped forge his relationship with Trump, as well as renew support with some who hadn’t seen Graham as conservative enough to represent South Carolina.

Graham has called Kavanaugh’s confirmation the “defining moment” of the Trump presidency. At a White House event celebrating judicial appointments last year, Trump and Graham marveled at their friendship after the ferocious fight for the 2016 presidential nomination. Graham was one of more than a dozen Republicans who ran against the New York real-estate mogul.

Back then, Trump had called Graham a “lightweight” and a “liberal,” and famously made public the senator’s cell phone number.

“After I got beaten like a dog, which he likes hearing,” Graham said of Trump, “he called me over to the White House and said, ‘I’d like you to help me.’ And I said, ‘I’d love to help you be a great president, because you’re now my president.'”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett are set to begin as a divided Senate charges ahead on President Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and cement a conservative court majority before Election Day.

Barrett, a federal appeals court judge, will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that she is “forever grateful” for Ginsburg’s trailblazing path as a woman. But she is resolved to maintain the perspective of her own mentor, the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and “apply the law as written,” according to her prepared opening remarks for the hearings, which start Monday as the country is in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life,” Barrett says in the remarks, which The Associated Press obtained.

Republicans, who control the Senate, are moving at a breakneck pace to seat Barrett before the Nov. 3 election to secure Trump’s pick and hear a high-profile challenge to the Affordable Care Act and any election-related challenges.

Democrats are trying in vain to delay the fast-track confirmation by raising fresh concerns about the safety of meeting during the pandemic after two GOP senators on the panel tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Spokesmen for Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the senators are symptom-free. Tillis will participate remotely Monday. Lee’s spokesman said the senator would be making a decision on whether to attend Monday morning, per his doctor’s orders. Both tested positive 10 days ago.

Key Democrats are staying away. California Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee and a committee member, plans to participate remotely from her Senate office due to coronavirus concerns, her spokesman said Sunday.

The committee released a letter from the Architect of the Capitol on Sunday that says the hearing room has been set up in consultation with the Office of Attending Physician with appropriate distance between seats and air ventilation systems that meet or exceed industry standards.

“We’re going to work safely,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” He said he took a coronavirus test last week and is “negative.”

Trump chose the 48-year-old judge after the death last month of Ginsburg, a liberal icon. It’s the opportunity to entrench a conservative majority on the court for years to come with his third justice.

Outside groups are pushing Democrats to make a strong case against what they call an illegitimate confirmation, when people are already voting in some states, saying the winner of the presidency should make the pick. No Supreme Court justice has ever been confirmed so close to a presidential contest.

“The public is with them that this shouldn’t happen before the election,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, which advocates against right-leaning nominees.

The country will get an extended look at Barrett over the next three days in hearings like none other during the heated election environment and the pandemic limiting public access.

Faith and family punctuate her testimony, and she said would bring “a few new perspectives” as the first mother of school-age children on the nine-member court.

Barrett says she uses her children as a test when deciding cases, asking herself how she would view the decision if one of her children were the party she was ruling against.

“Even though I would not like the result, would I understand that the decision was fairly reasoned and grounded in the law?” she says in the prepared remarks.

A Catholic, she says she believes in the “power of prayer.” Barrett’s religious views and past leadership role in a Catholic faith community pose a challenge for Democrats as they try to probe her judicial approach to abortion, gay marriage and other social issues without veering into inappropriate questions of her faith.

Ordinarily, Barrett would get to show off her family and seven children. But the White House event announcing her nomination, in which most of the audience did not wear masks, has been labeled a “superspreader” for the coronavirus.

More than two dozen people linked to the Sept. 26 Rose Garden event, including the two GOP senators, have contracted COVID-19 since then. Barrett and her family went maskless at the event. She and her husband, Jesse, tested positive for the virus earlier this year and recovered, two administration officials have said.

Democrats already were enraged that Republicans are moving so quickly having refused to consider President Barack Obama nominee in February 2016, well before that year’s election.

Barrett is the most openly anti-abortion Supreme Court nominee in decades and her vote could provide a majority to restrict if not overturn abortion rights. Democrats have made clear that they will press Barrett on health care, abortion and other issues where her vote could push the court further to the right.

Republicans will highlight Barrett’s belief in sticking to the text of laws and the original meaning of constitutional provisions, both Scalia trademarks as well.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.