SC says "Fuck it," Sends Sanford to Congress.

[Maraxus]

WASHINGTON -- Disgraced ex-South Carolina governor Mark Sanford won his bid for redemption on Tuesday night, defeating Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch for his old seat in Congress.

Sanford, a Republican who admitted an extramarital affair in 2009, was ready to quit politics for good if he was not victorious in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. He will replace Republican Tim Scott, who was appointed to the Senate.

The former governor -- once a rising GOP star considered presidential material -- was an early favorite in the Republican district, which Mitt Romney carried by 18 percentage points in the 2012 election. But the revelation that his ex-wife, Jenny, accused Sanford of trespassing at her home caused the National Republican Congressional Committee to withdraw its financial and logistical support.

Sanford must appear in Charleston County Family Court on Thursday on his ex-wife's complaint.

Colbert Busch, a businesswoman and sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, stayed competitive in the race and was leading a final Public Policy Polling survey two days before the special election. She expressed confidence earlier in the day that she could win a seat that had stayed Republican for 30 years.

It was the first time Sanford was on the ballot since his admission in 2009 that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail — when he was actually in Argentina visiting his mistress — became a punch line on late-night TV.

"I absolutely failed. Period," Sanford said in an interview earlier Tuesday on CNN, one of several he gave on Election Day. He told MSNBC that "one event does not define your life."

Sanford urged his friends and neighbors to help him spread the word about his ideas to curb the nation's debt and to send a message about his Democratic rival. He stressed that Colbert Busch received help from labor unions and Democratic groups from outside the district, and tied her to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the House GOP campaign committee, congratulated Sanford and made no mention of how they had parted ways. "These results demonstrate just how devastating the policies of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are for House Democrats in 2014," he said in a statement. "At the end of the day, running on the Obama-Pelosi ticket was just too toxic for Elizabeth Colbert Busch."
Colbert Busch primarily focused on her plans to create jobs. She is the business development officer at Clemson University's Restoration Institute and has worked in the shipping industry.

Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, congratulated Colbert Busch's efforts and used her as an example of how the party will stay aggressive in the 2014 elections. Democrats need a net gain of 17 seats to win majority control in the House. Sanford's election does not change that equation.

"The fact that the Democrat made this competitive is a testament to the strength of Elizabeth Colbert Busch as a candidate and the Republican habit of nominating flawed candidates," Israel said. "Democrats will be aggressive and drive deep into Republican-held territory this cycle to find districts with flawed candidates where we can compete."

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[The Romulan Republic]

Fuck it is more or less my response. This is disgusting.

[General Mung Beans]

I had high hopes for this race...

But all things considered Sanford (while still terrible) isn't the worst Republican out there especially for a state like South Carolina.

[Crossroads Inc.]

How close was the election? I didn't see anything in the post spelling it out.
Sure he won, but I want to know by how much.

[Flagg]

9 points.

Daaaaaamn South Carolina. You dumb.

[Maraxus]

Sanford won 54-45. This district, though, was specifically drawn to be one of the more heavily Republican SC districts, since it split Charleston in half and crammed nearly every Black precinct into the neighboring 6th. Romney won around 60% of the vote here in 2012, and he wasn't exactly the strongest of candidates. It's really tough for Dems to win districts like this since all of the Dems in similarly Republican districts are long-time incumbents with a lot of crossover appeal. Moreover, none of them are quite as racially polarized as South Carolina is as a whole. As this election shows, a convicted felon could probably win in this district if he had an R next to his name.

OTOH, I think that John Boehner is the real loser in this election. Not only did the RNCC basically try to sell Sanford up the river as soon as he won the primary, but Sanford also has a history of being a real dickbag when it comes to being part of the team. His relationship with the legislature was absolutely abysmal when he was governor and was considered to be the fringiest of fringe Republicans when he was in the house. Sanford probably doesn't think he owes the House Leadership anything, and will be more of a pain in the ass for an already-weak Speaker than he will for the Democrats. That, at least, is a silver lining here.

[Patroklos]

The interesting thing was until the most recent pre election pole showing a dead heat Colbert-Bush had a comfortable lead according to NPR on the way into work this morning.

I am from that district and it is very Republican but not so much fundementalist type the rest of the state generally produces so I can understand if a moral failing isn't as much an issue as in the rest of the state, but I am curious what could have erroded an apparent lead into a nine point loss.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

The lead was most likely never there to have been eroded in the first place. Polls often can't be taken straight at face value, and look at how polling worked out in the 2012 presidential election: people were able to interpret the polls as Romney having a comfortable lead. And that was with significantly more polls, many of which had significantly higher amounts of scrutiny.

[Maraxus]

As far as I can tell it was mostly the district's demographics reasserting itself. South Carolina is a fairly racially polarized state, meaning that your average Democrat can have a fairly high "floor" but also a fairly low "ceiling." It's not quite as bad as Mississippi where the election results mirror state demographics almost exactly, but it's enough to make the last 5-10 percent very difficult for a Democrat in any given election. That's why Obama could get 45% in the 2012 election, but never have the outcome in doubt for the Republicans.

As for the 1st in particular, the polls showing ECB winning by a comfortable margin didn't show a whole lot of crossover appeal so much as they showed Republicans unwilling to vote in the election. This PPP poll, for instance showed that Romney would have won SC-1 by only 5%, when in reality he won the district by 18 points. I guess the terrible specter of Nancy Pelosi and "Obamacare" helped make up their minds.

[Guardsman Bass]

I think that's why it happened, and Sanford deliberately played that up by comparing Colbert-Busch to national-level Democrats whom South Carolina Republicans despise. Once he'd pushed hard to "nationalize" the election issues and make it a supposed contest between him and Pelosi/Obama/whatever, he got the full Republican support.