Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford easily won the special election for the Tim Scott’s vacated congressional seat, representing South Carolina’s 1st District. Even though Sanford was outspent 5 to 1 by Colbert Busch, the contest wasn’t that close, with the former SC Governor out performing his opponent by more than 9 percentage points.

Many politicos had the contest even going in, but that was based on earlier polls showing Busch with a 10 percentage point lead over Sanford. Due to the work of local Tea party groups and volunteers, Sanford tightened up the race in the final stretch, even though the GOP pulled funding. Tea Party supporters suggested that the GOP establishment wasn’t too keen on having another fiscally conservative house member to contend with and surmised that many in the GOP saw Sanford as a liability.

In his victory speech, Sanford committed to bringing his brand of fiscal conservatism to the house and promised the voters of South Carolina’s 1st district that he would work hard to represent their interests in Washington, DC.

Some conservative strategists suggest this could be a preview of things to come in 2014 and 2016, when congressional Democrats will no longer be able to ride Obama’s coat tails into office, as they had in 2008 and 2012.

On an interesting side bar, supporters of Colbert Busch flooded social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook with nasty personal attacks directed toward Mark Sanford. They went on to slander and attack the residents of South Carolina, calling them “Dumb”, “Stupid” and “Hypocritical”, among other disparaging remarks.

During her concession speech, Colbert Busch stated that she respected the decision of the people, although many in attendance didn’t appear to agree. Busch had to chastise her rowdy crowd of supporters for booing when she made that statement.