GOP congressional candidate Mark Sanford picked an inopportune time to release a newspaper ad complaining about his "rough week."
After a six-day stretch that included a bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, a catastrophic explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, and a daylong lockdown of an entire city, Sanford ran a full-page ad in the Charleston Post and Courier on Sunday lamenting recent negative developments in his campaign for South Carolina's 1st Congressional District.
“It’s been a rough week, and so I wanted to address both Wednesday’s news and the new, incoming attacks by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,” Sanford wrote in the introduction of the ad.
To be fair, last week was bad for Sanford. The National Republican Congressional Committee dropped financial support for his campaign after a complaint filed by his ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, emerged claiming that he'd trespassed on her property and broken their divorce agreement. Shortly thereafter, he was hit by a Democratic super PAC for his trips to visit his mistress in Argentina. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee later piled on with another ad buy targeting his ethics violations and notorious sex scandal.
Sanford spent most of the ad defending himself from the attack ads and attempting to explain the controversy over his alleged trespassing, but as the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported Monday, the Republican stumbled again in the closing paragraph when his attempt to make a rousing historical reference about his toughness was marred by a typo.
I leave you with one last thought. In March of 1863, there was similarly very little time. A South Carolinian by the name of William Travis drew a line in the sand with his sword and simply asked those who would stay and fight, to cross it. His efforts, and that of those who died with him there at the Alamo, ultimately inspired Texans to come to the aid of their brethren, and defeat Santa Anna’s army though they were outnumbered at the outset by six to one. I’m outnumbered right now, but will fight to the end toward freedom and financial sanity in Washington so important to sustaining it. I’d ask you to cross the line and fight with me.
The Journal Constitution notes that the Battle of the Alamo was fought in 1836, not 1863.
While Democrats were busy mocking Sanford for the awkwardly timed and inaccurate ad, Public Policy Polling released a new survey on Monday, showing Democratic candidate Elizabeth Colbert Busch with a 9-point lead over the former governor. Those numbers are concerning for Sanford, but among Republican respondents, it was actually Jenny Sanford who took the biggest hit in the wake of the trespassing complaint. In fact, the ex-governor's favorability among GOP voters actually increased from a previous poll.
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