Mark Sanford wins…
The Huffington Post
“Americans”, journalist David Halberstam once wrote, are “remarkably tolerant of error, particularly if it is self-confessed.”
Mark Sanford is thanking his lucky stars that’s the case. The former South Carolina governor won his old seat in Congress back on Tuesday, after voters in the state’s coastal 1st Congressional District decided to overlook his many misadventures since he first admitted an extramarital affair in 2009.
Sanford, 52, a Republican, defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a 58-year old businesswoman best known nationally as comedian Stephen Colbert’s older sister, in a special election to fill a seat vacated by former Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Scott was appointed by the state’s Republican governor to the U.S. Senate after Jim DeMint left his seat early to lead The Heritage Foundation, a D.C. think tank.
“It would be the most obvious of obviouses to say that I thought politics was forever over for me,” Sanford told The Huffington Post in an interview last week. “But something happened that never happened in our state, which is, you know, a United States senator retired early. I mean that just doesn’t happen in South Carolina.”
Two weeks ago, Sanford was in “free fall,” as he described it. His past indiscretions -– which played out in front of a national audience four years ago -– were dredged back up by news of trespassing complaints that had been lodged against him by his ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, for showing up at her home uninvited.
“I said to my guys at the time, ‘Look, this thing’s over with if people think that I’m the kind of guy that would go, you know, creeping through the hedge of my ex’s house,’” Sanford said.
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- Mark Sanford Wins South Carolina Special Election, Pulling Off Huge Political Comeback (businessinsider.com)
- Mark Sanford Defeats Colbert Busch (newser.com)
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