Exceeding all expectations, the former governor and Appalachian-trail hiker regained his old Congressional seat, whipping Elizabeth Colbert Busch by nine points. 
 
 RANDALL HILL / REUTERS Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford celebrates his victory in the South Carolina first district congressional race at Liberty Tap Room in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on May 7, 2013. 
 
 Now Mark Sanford will be the one who has to forgive. Exceeding all expectations, the former governor and Appalachian-trail hiker regained his old Congressional seat, whipping Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch by nine points in a May 7 special election. 
 
 His victory seemed so unlikely three weeks ago — when a report emerged that his ex-wife Jenny had filed a complaint that he violated their divorce agreement by showing up at her house without permission — that the National Republican Congressional Committee pulled its cash from his race. Local Republicans fled whenever reporters asked if they supported him. 
 
 Sanford was easy to underestimate. Political comebacks following flamboyant extramarital affairs are rare; he took out an ad in the newspaper comparing his campaign to the Alamo in ways that didn’t make sense. His few boosters didn’t help much: Cheating website AshleyMadison.com put his face on a billboard; Larry Flynt donated $2,600 to Sanford “because no one has done more to expose the sexual hypocrisy of traditional values in America today.” “I’m outnumbered right now,” he said in his Alamo ad, “but will fight to the end toward freedom and financial sanity in Washington so important to sustaining it.” But Sanford overcame it all, partly just by working harder. On the last day of the campaign, Sanford made ten stops; Colbert Busch didn’t make any. 
 
 Sure, having Sanford in the House is another target in the Democrats’ accusations of a war on women. Still, it was dumb of the GOP to abandon Sanford because South Carolina’s first district is way red and Sanford dominated the primary. 
 
 Sanford says he’s learned a lot about forgiveness and accepting other’s selfish choices. “After you’ve been through a complete cratering in life, you learn to let it go,” he said. The GOP better hope so, because he’s going to be around for a while. 
 
 This article has been updated ||||| SANFORD STUNS 
 
 They said he’d never win. But Mark Sanford defeated Elizabeth Colbert Busch on Tuesday night in South Carolina for a trip to Congress. John Avlon on the road back from the Appalachian Trail. 
 
 The redemption tour is over and Congress has a new Comeback Kid. 
 
 Scandal-laden former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford won back his old congressional seat on Tuesday night, defeating Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch by a 54 percent to 45 percent margin in a high-turnout special election. 
 
 The victory shocked the national press corps, who had been predicting a Colbert-Busch victory—with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, for example, declaring “this is not serious” after a PPP poll found Sanford 9 points behind the Democratic nominee two weeks from Election Day. 
 
 But to be fair, even the Republican National Congressional Committee decided that Sanford was a lost cause, unceremoniously withdrawing its cash after court documents were leaked showing that Sanford had violated the terms of his divorce agreement by trespassing onto his ex-wife’s property to watch the Super Bowl with their sons. There were late-inning dirty tricks on the Republican side of the aisle as well, such as the release of late 1980s mug shots of Colbert-Busch. 
 
 The national impulse to view the race as a contest between Jenny Sanford and Stephen Colbert—Elizabeth’s beloved comedian brother—was so tempting that it distracted from the facts on the ground. Sanford’s much-mocked tactic of debating a cardboard cutout of Nancy Pelosi proved an effective tool to nationalize the race for local voters, casting the contest as a decision about whether liberal Democrats should have another vote in Congress. That move, combined with the 18 percent advantage Republicans have in the coastal First District—thanks to the rigged system of redistricting—helped Sanford win. 
 
 Elizabeth Colbert Busch ran a confident campaign, relentlessly running as an “independent businesswoman” who would vote her district and be a centrist voice devoted to calming hyperpartisan discord in Congress. She was rewarded with the most competitive congressional general election the First District has had since 1980. But her initial success in polls might have created an overconfidence that put her campaign on the defense, trying not to lose rather than trying to win. She agreed to only one debate and in the final day of the election kept a minimal campaign schedule while Sanford stuck to a tireless calendar, with 10 scheduled stops. 
 
 “The Colbert Busch team ran like their party won 58-40 last November,” said Shawn Drury, political editor of South Carolina Patch.com, which provided the most detailed coverage of the campaign and hosted the sole debate (which I participated in). “And they were stunned by the degree to which Republicans turned out for the special election.” 
 
 From the start of this unlikely campaign, Sanford has been easy to underestimate. His well-chronicled scandal, which brought “hiking the Appalachian Trail” into the lexicon, obscured his ability to connect with low-country voters. There’s a reason Sanford has never lost an election, and during the crowded GOP primaries I was struck by the way local voters called him “Mark” rather than “Governor”—and his evident mastery of policy details helped him stand out from the pack. For all the easy accusations of hypocrisy, Sanford had never been a social conservative Bible-thumper as much as strident fiscal conservative who was railing against the deficit and debt while arguing for entitlement reform back in the 1990s. 
 
 All this translated to Sanford outperforming polls throughout this campaign by considerable margins. Some voters were reluctant to tell pollsters they would pull the lever for as scandal-scarred a candidate as Sanford, but in the end they did. 
 
 Sanford has been granted the rarest thing in political life—a second chance. He will have to earn this opportunity by following through on his promise to be more humble and empathetic in office. He will enter Congress with seniority and a chance to steer debates in a constructive rather than inflammatory way. No doubt some politicians—I’m looking at you, Anthony Weiner—will take too much comfort from Sanford’s victory and be tempted to pursue their own premature redemption campaign. The takeaway isn’t that scandals don’t matter, but that voters can put them in perspective. Perhaps the most transferable lesson is a reinforcement of the old adage “all politics is local” and the idea that in politics, as in sports, the best defense is a good offense. 
 
 ||||| 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. 
 
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 reset Mark Sanford victory speech POLITICO Junkies: Sanford takeaways 
 
 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. ||||| FIGURING FAITH | When he left office two years ago, it seemed unlikely that Mark Sanford’s future would hold another successful bid for elected office. Since 2009, when the former governor of South Carolina admitted that his absences from the state to allegedly hike the Appalachian Trail were, in fact, trips to Argentina to carry on an extramarital affair, Sanford’s political death has been all but sealed. Sanford, however, handily won the Republican primary for the House of Representatives seat he held in the 1990s before he was elected governor. And his victory in Tuesday’s South Carolina special general election shows just how far political redemption can stretch. 
 
 Sanford’s campaign also has implications for former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned from Congress in 2011 amid a sexting scandal, and is now reportedly considering a candidacy in this year’s New York City mayoral election. Setting Sanford’s “God of second chances” aside, just how much are voters prepared to forgive? 
 
 A survey conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in June 2011, in the midst of the scandal that ended with Weiner’s resignation, shows that Sanford’s path to redemption among his Republican constituents was much steeper than Weiner’s will be, if he chooses to run. This is not because Americans perceive digital infidelity to be a lighter offense than other kinds of adultery. Overall, Americans do not differentiate between sexting and having an affair: nearly identical majorities say that politicians who are caught sending sexually explicit messages to someone who is not their spouse (56 percent) and politicians who cheat on their wives (57 percent) should resign from office. And for both Sanford and Weiner, their subsequent denials that infidelity took place are more damning in voters’ eyes than the indiscretions themselves: nearly 7-in-10 (68 percent) Americans say officials who lie about immoral sexual acts should resign. 
 
 But Sanford, running for reelection in a deeply conservative district, had a higher bar to clear when it came to voters’ expectations about integrity and sexual morality. Neither Republicans nor Democrats give politicians a free pass when it comes to lying or infidelity, but more than 8-in-10 (82 percent) Republicans agree that an elected official who lies to cover up an immoral sexual act should resign, compared to less than two-thirds (64 percent) of Democrats. Similarly, 7-in-10 (70 percent) Republicans agree that an elected official who cheats on his wife should resign, compared to less than 6-in-10 (59 percent) Democrats. 
 
 More on point for the question of redemption, Republicans are simply less likely than Democrats to believe that a politician who commits a moral error in his personal life can still execute his official duties in an ethical manner. While nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats agree that an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life, a majority (55 percent) of Republicans disagree. 
 
 Because his road to redemption was much steeper, Mark Sanford’s successful campaign in the Republican primary and eventual victory in the race bodes well for Weiner in the mayoral race. The data also shows that Democrats, like Americans overall, are more likely to say that financial indiscretions like taking a bribe (91 percent) should be punished with resignation, than they are to say that sexual indiscretions require vacating office. Given that the mayoral race in the Democratic stronghold of New York City has already been marred by allegations of corruption, the combination of relatively weaker concerns about the personal failings of public officials among Democrats and stronger concerns about embezzlement and bribery may spell good news for Weiner later this year.
– Mark Sanford just pulled off a comeback that would make even Robert Downey Jr. envious—from disgrace and national laughing stock four years ago to winning back his former South Carolina House seat last night, despite pundits predicting a win for opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch. How did he do it and what does it all mean? The press picks over the bones: Sanford clinched the victory thanks to his mastery of retail politics, says Politico. He drove a van up and down the South Carolina coastline to reintroduce himself to voters, attend public events, and preach about a "God of second chances." Meanwhile, Colbert Busch got too cocky, running only defense and no offense, writes the Daily Beast. She only agreed to one debate and made few campaign stops. "The Colbert Busch team ran like their party won 58-40 last November," says a local commentator. But perhaps the real loser in this election was the rest of the Republican Party, which wrote Sanford off and refused him financial support, observes Time. It'll sure make for one awkward swearing-in ceremony with the previously not-so-supportive John Boehner, adds the Hill. One unexpected winner? Anthony Wiener, who may use Sanford's redemption as inspiration for his rumored run in this year's New York City mayoral race, writes the Washington Post.