Sanford found a path to victory by turning the race into a referendum on Democrats. | AP Photo | Date: May 7, 2013 Behind Mark Sanford's turnaround

South Carolinians may not love former Gov. Mark Sanford. They may still have a bad taste in their mouths after his governorship. They may even wonder whether they can entirely trust him.

But in the end, they decided he was as good as they were going to get.


Sanford completed his return from the political graveyard Tuesday night, easily dispatching Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a deep red district that Mitt Romney won by nearly 20 percentage points.

( PHOTOS: Mark Sanford’s career)

With many voters expressing misgivings about the former governor, Sanford found a path to victory by turning the race into a referendum on the national Democratic Party instead of himself. He put his political gifts to work, wooing skeptical voters in a relentless game of retail politics. And he had the advantage of facing a political newcomer whose inexperience at times showed.

In the end, the nail-biter that late polls hinted at never materialized: Sanford crushed Colbert Busch, 54 percent to 45 percent.

A turning point in the race came two weeks ago, when Sanford held a mock debate with a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, implying that the California Democrat — persona non grata in conservative South Carolina — was a stand-in for his Democratic opponent.

( Also on POLITICO: Sanford defeats Colbert Busch)

The former governor endured days of derision from the press for the move — Mark Sanford, once regarded as a viable potential presidential candidate, was debating a piece of cardboard.

But behind the scenes, Sanford’s aides grinned: Every time a reporter put “Pelosi” and “Colbert Busch” in the same sentence, the Republican was winning. And some Democratic aides began to worry, too.

After months of relentless focus on his personal life — his upcoming marriage to his Argentine fiancée, the charges that he trespassed at his ex-wife’s house and more — the theatrics helped Sanford turn the race into a debate about issues. Voters had to make a decision: Was Colbert Busch beholden to the Democratic Party? And if so, was that worse than Sanford’s transgressions?

( QUIZ: Do you know Mark Sanford?)

Over the ensuing days, Sanford – in TV ads, on the campaign trail, and in a debate — drove home his message. He challenged Colbert Busch to say how she would differentiate herself from Pelosi. And he hammered her for accepting campaign help from Washington-based groups like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and House Majority PAC, which combined to spend nearly $1 million on the TV airwaves against him.

As he greeted a lunchtime crowd in Charleston last week, Sanford told one supporter that his fight was against Washington Democrats who were “pouring acid on my head every day.”

There was something else playing in Sanford’s favor — his political instincts. For all his flaws, his fiercest critics concede, few are better at retail politics.

In 1994, Sanford — then a 34-year-old real estate investor and political newcomer — launched his first campaign for Congress, traveling up and down the South Carolina coastline in an exhausting push to introduce himself to voters.

This time, Sanford was, in a sense, running from scratch once again. Without the trappings of the governorship, he hop-scotched the Lowcountry in a black van driven by an aide. After spending a year in obscurity, he was reintroducing himself to voters — soothing the concerns of voters who still felt squeamish about what he had done.

In a district rich with evangelical voters, he adopted religious language to describe his personal journey, talking about a “God of second chances.”

“His strength of his campaign style is that he’s out there every day,” said Scott English, who served as Sanford’s gubernatorial chief of staff. “He loves being around people, and that’s the hallmark of his campaign.”

In Colbert Busch, Sanford was running against a rookie opponent who made some rookie mistakes. While the former governor barnstormed the district, Colbert Busch seemed to be in hiding. She rarely held public events — and when she did, she was sometimes in a hurry to leave.

At a Chamber of Commerce forum last week, the Democrat delivered four minutes of remarks and was then hustled out of the room by a team of handlers. As baffled reporters trailed, Colbert Busch made a beeline for the parking lot.

For a still largely unknown candidate who needed to introduce herself to voters, it was a head-scratcher of a moment.

“I’ve never seen a candidate sprint like that,” one reporter said at the time.

Though she turned in a strong performance in the sole debate she agreed to, at other times Colbert Busch had difficulty articulating her positions. Any Democrat running in a conservative district has to thread the needle when it comes to talking about issues, but Colbert Busch had particular trouble. Asked in a CNN interview on Tuesday whether she would support the Manchin-Toomey gun control bill, she struggled to come up with an answer.

Of course, the messiness surrounding Sanford’s return to politics won’t end with his win. On Thursday, he’s scheduled to appear in court to answer his ex-wife’s trespassing complaint. And within minutes of the race being called, Democrats were busy trying to make Sanford another glaring reminder of the GOP’s problem with women.

Once he’s sworn into Congress, Sanford will join a House Republican Conference that by and large wanted no part of him. How he and GOP leaders navigate that awkwardness is bound to be an ongoing source of intrigue for House members and reporters alike.

Among the questions Sanford faces is how he will deal with GOP leaders who didn’t lift a finger to help him. After the trespassing charges surfaced, the National Republican Congressional Committee — furious that it had been blindsided — announced that it would cease spending money to support him. In an interview with POLITICO last week, Sanford said he thought the NRCC was making a mistake.

He’s also going to have to decide what kind of member he wants to be. Will he be a rabble-rouser, as he occasionally was during the Newt Gingrich era? Or will he put aside any harsh feelings he has for party leaders and be a loyal soldier for House Speaker John Boehner?

Sanford’s friends say he’s been so busy with the race that he’s given little thought to such basic questions as who his chief of staff will be. But, after being out of the limelight for two years, they say he’s hungry to get back to policymaking. As the only former governor in the House — and, for good reason or bad, one of the best-known members of Congress — his megaphone will be large.

And, unlike his first go-round in the House, Sanford allies say this time he’s not thinking about pursuing higher ambitions.

“I think he will be excited to have a platform and have a voice in the political process, and not be focused on climbing the political ladder. He’s going to be engaged in the public debate,” said Chad Walldorf, a longtime Sanford friend who spent two years as his gubernatorial deputy chief of staff. “I think he’ll be unfettered by concerns of higher office and that will give him a unique perspective and an ability to speak out on issues.”

CORRECTION: Chad Walldorf’s position with Gov. Sanford was misstated in an earlier version of this story.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Nick Gass @ 05/07/2013 10:42 PM CORRECTION: Chad Walldorf’s position with Gov. Sanford was misstated in an earlier version of this story.