Polls have closed in South Carolina's First District, and the candidates await the results in what is likely to be an extremely close race. Check the live results here.
No matter the winner, the makeup of the House of Representatives will be largely unaffected, as one seat in the middle of a term does little to move the needle in the overwhelmingly Republican body.
Just a day before today's race, polls were effectively a tossup, showing former Republican Governor Mark Sanford with 47 percent of the vote and his Democratic opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch with 46 percent. The election has been a referendum on Sanford's past. In 2009, he was the governor of South Carolina, but he disappeared for a week. It later turned out he was in Argentina having an affair, a dalliance paid for with state funds. He was forced to resign by the state legislature a year later.
Today's special election became necessary after former congressman Tim Scott was appointed by Republican Governor Nikki Haley to fill the vacated Senate seat of Jim DeMint.
DeMint, in turn, had left the Senate at the end of 2012 to head the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank now in the news for its opposition to immigration reform.
In the last few weeks, leaked documents showed Sanford was accused of trespassing on multiple occasions at his ex-wife's house. Support for Sanford dropped precipitously but later rebounded. Sanford took out a full-page ad in local news explaining his version of the story, saying he was simply accompanying his son in a viewing of the Super Bowl. Sanford focused his campaign rhetoric on tying his opponent to national Democrats, particularly Nancy Pelosi, who is often vilified as a standard bearer for the "Obama agenda" in conservative circles.
After the news of the accusations leaked, the National Republican Congressional Committee announced it was withdrawing its funding from Sanford's campaign, leaving him to scramble for private donations to keep his operation afloat.
Still, the race has been an uphill battle for the Democratic challenger. South Carolina's First District stretches along the coast of the state, encompassing the relatively liberal enclaves of Charleston and Myrtle Beach, as well as the heavily red areas surrounding them. In 2012, the district went for Republican Mitt Romney by 18 points. Colbert Busch portrayed herself as a fiscally conservative Democrat with staunchly progressive opinions on social issues like same-sex marriage.
If Sanford wins, it will be a rebuke for the Democrats, who outspent him five times over just to lose to an admitted adulterer and embezzler in a bastion of evangelical Christianity. Of course, Democrats may take it as a sign that they can come close to winning even in staunchly red areas of the country, as long as Republicans keep shooting themselves in the feet, a practice that shows no signs of abating.
In any case, victory tonight is likely to be short-lived. The winner must run again in 2014 to keep the seat, and without mitigating circumstances, it is almost certain to go to the Republican candidate, whomever that is. 2014 is a midterm election, and Republicans traditionally have stronger turnout in years without a presidential election. It seems likely to return to its conservative position as soon as sex scandals and national politics stop pumping excitement into the race.
And no matter which candidate defends their seat next year, they may end up facing the same opponent. Sanford's ex-wife Jenny has been rumored as a potential challenger. She seems a likely choice to face Colbert Busch next year, as Jenny Sanford can wrest the women's vote away and play the embattles and long-suffering first wife.
The same role works if she faces her ex-husband, and she may be tempted to run against him simply to end his career once and for all.
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