Colbert Busch is in the driver’s seat. How Colbert Busch flipped script on Sanford

CHARLESTON, S.C. – It was a fight Elizabeth Colbert Busch seemed destined to lose: A Democrat and political neophyte up against a seasoned if scarred ex-governor who’d never lost an election — running in a House district controlled by Republicans for three decades running.

Yet Colbert Busch has flipped the script. She’s done so by running a stage-managed, virtually mistake-free campaign, posting big fundraising numbers with an assist from her famous brother, and turning in a debate performance this week that bucked expectations. Sanford, of course, did his part, too: The self-destructive ex-governor might have been the only Republican who could blow what should be a gimme election for the party.


Colbert Busch could still lose Tuesday’s special election. Aides to both candidates say the race is close, and some Democrats worry that Republican voters who dominate the district will “come home” during the final weekend and vote for Sanford despite their misgivings.

But Colbert Busch is in the driver’s seat; a Public Policy Polling survey last week had her up 9 percentage points. Here is POLITICO’s look at how she got there:

The debate

Sanford had been hammering Colbert Busch throughout the general election for refusing to debate him more than once, saying she was trying to avoid discussing issues and divulging her left-leaning views. So when the two finally appeared Monday, expectations for Colbert Busch were low.

She easily exceeded them. For 75 minutes, the Democrat proved she could go toe to toe with Sanford on issues ranging from health care to immigration to gun control.

The turning point came when she zinged the former governor for holding himself up as a fiscal conservative after he used taxpayer money as governor to visit his Argentine mistress and now-fiance.

Sanford was at a loss for words. With the crowd cheering Colbert Busch on, all he could muster in response was, “I couldn’t hear what she said. … Repeat it, I didn’t hear.”

Colbert Busch had to show herself to be a credible candidate; relying on Sanford’s missteps alone could only go so far. She did so in the debate.

A low profile

With deadly precision, Colbert Busch exploited her opponent’s battered public image – tightly packaging herself as a trustworthy and family-oriented mother of three. Her campaign ads were soft and biographical, and she left it to outside groups to run negative TV commercials casting Sanford as a bad guy.

Through it all, Colbert Busch’s interactions with the press were carefully managed, which helped keep the focus on Sanford while avoiding a rookie gaffe. She declined a request for a one-on-one interview this week, though she did hold a brief gaggle with local and national reporters on Wednesday.

At times, the under-the-radar strategy has been almost suffocating. On Tuesday, Colbert Busch showed up to a Charleston forum with an entourage befitting Kim Kardashian. After speaking for a few minutes, she bolted for the door, bypassing many of the audience members and reporters who wanted to talk with her. When a reporter from POLITICO yelled out a question to the candidate, an aide wearing a suit and sunglasses stepped in front of her.

“There won’t be any questions,” he said.

Some have expressed bewilderment at Colbert Busch’s bunker mentality. At a forum this week sponsored by the Rotary Club of Charleston – which Colbert Busch skipped – one of the hosts led off the event by criticizing her, rattling off a David Letterman-style “Top 10 Reasons why Elizabeth Colbert Busch won’t appear before Charleston Rotary Club.”

Sanford, long known for his love of retail politics, has also expressed frustration with his opponent’s low profile. Win or lose, he told POLITICO this week, he had made himself accessible to voters – a ritual in southern politics. And he said it wasn’t enough for her to appear in just one debate.

“Wherever it is, I’ll go,” Sanford said. “I go to any audience that asks … and that’s the way I’ve always been in politics. I think that it is important as a democratic precept to say, debate is the foundation to the way that we solve conflict and come up with solutions across a population of 300 million people, and to deny that to the people of the 1st Congressional District, I don’t think it is democratic.”

The cash

Money is important in all races, but it was particularly important for Colbert Busch.

Sanford had universal name ID; Colbert Busch needed to purchase it with TV ads. With a huge boost from her comedian brother, Stephen Colbert, she out-raised Sanford, $1.1 million to $788,000. Stephen Colbert hosted fundraisers for her in Washington, D.C., New York City and Charleston.

“Having Stephen come in – obviously it’s been wonderful for him to help with fundraising,” Colbert Busch told a group of reporters this week. “It’s just been great,” she said. “I love my brother and I thank him so much for what he’s done for me.”

Jaime Harrison, a former aide to South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn who is expected to be named state Democratic Party chairman on Saturday, said Colbert Busch “needed to be able to tell a story, and her fundraising has helped her with that.”

The Sanford factor

For all her feats as a first-time candidate, Colbert Busch is ahead mostly because she’s not Sanford. The compromised ex-governor spent the first four months apologizing for the scandal surrounding his extramarital affair as governor.

For Sanford, the redemption offensive was enough to win the Republican nomination – in no small part because he was facing a weak field of GOP rivals. But through it all, Republican leaders in Washington worried. In a Republican district, why couldn’t they have a less controversial candidate who would win in a romp? And what if embarrassing details from Sanford’s divorce from his ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, came out?

That’s exactly what happened in April, when The Associated Press reported that a few months earlier Jenny Sanford filed a court complaint accusing her ex-husband of trespassing at her Sullivan’s Island home. D.C. Republicans were furious with Sanford, saying they were blindsided. Within hours, the National Republican Congressional Committee announced that it was pulling out of the race – leaving Sanford to fend for himself against a million-dollar ad barrage by Democratic groups.

Colbert Busch was an impressive candidate in her own right – she has a solid resume, with a long career in the maritime industry, and her large family is prominent in Charleston. But she couldn’t have picked a more ideal foe than Sanford.

“It’s sort of like the stars aligned,” Harrison said. “She’s a great candidate. She had a flawed opponent. Mark Sanford was ideal to run against, and I think it would have been much tougher if another candidate had come out of the GOP primary. But we were fortunate enough to draw the Mark Sanford lot.”

This article tagged under: Elizabeth Colbert Busch