USA TODAY – CHARLESTON, S.C. – If political debates are all about “creating moments,” as South Carolina Republican strategist Hogan Gidley says, then first-time candidate Elizabeth Colbert Busch seems to have created one Monday night. Her zinger to former governor Mark Sanford about his disappearance to Argentina in 2009 led the late TV news here – the only look most voters will get of the congressional debate, which wasn’t shown on local television.
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Both Colbert Busch, a Democrat, and Sanford, a Republican, told voters they would attack federal spending if elected from the 1st Congressional District. Then Colbert Busch “went there,” as one of the moderators put it: “When we talk about fiscal spending and we talk about protecting the taxpayers, it doesn’t mean you take the money we saved and leave the country for a personal purpose,” she said.
It was a veiled reference to Sanford’s 2009 disappearance for several days to visit his mistress in Argentina.
Sanford didn’t respond – he said he didn’t hear Colbert Busch – but the audience in the debate hall did, including Lee Anderson, a Boeing employee who went to the debate undecided about his vote but certain that if he were to miss five days of work with no explanation, he would be fired. What would have happened, he wanted to know, if something like the Boston Marathon bombings had occurred while Sanford was absent?
Read more at USA Today.
