History Shows It's Game Over for Sanford and Weiner

Political comebacks have been in vogue lately. First Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor who was the laughingstock of the nation after an extramarital affair in 2009, won the recent Republican primary in the special election for the South Carolina First District. Then, in last week's New York Times Magazine, erstwhile congressman and sexter Anthony Weiner revealed his interest in the New York City mayoralty.

There seems to be a consensus that, not only are Sanford's and Weiner's comebacks possible, but also that they wouldn't be unusual. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, if you look at the history of politicians attempting to come back from scandal, Weiner faces extremely long odds, and Sanford is extremely lucky to have gotten as far as he has.

We at Baseballot dipped into the archives and identified 82 federal and statewide elected officials over the past 20 years who have faced scandal—sex or otherwise—while in office. Only 10 can be said to have definitively survived the charges leveled at them. Four more (Bill Clinton, Kathy Augustine, Scott DesJarlais, and John Swallow) remain inconclusive. That means 68 of the 82 (83%) at some point fell from power as a result of their sins—whether via resignation (38), removal (5), retirement (14), or repudiation by the voters (11). This is the population we're really interested in, as it includes Weiner and Sanford.

Out of those 68, 66 never held elected office again. That's an abysmal 97% attrition rate. The two success stories include only one who successfully returned to his previous position: Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who was removed in 2003 following a politically popular decision to defy a court order to remove the Ten Commandments from public property. (The second, former Michigan congresswoman Barbara-Rose Collins, managed to win a couple local elections to the Detroit City Council.)

This doesn't even include people who weren't holding office at the time of their scandal, such as former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, who it's safe to say would've been run out of town on a rail if he were still a senator. The 66, however, do include Newt Gingrich, who has arguably made a comeback by doing as well as he did in the 2012 GOP primaries, as well as Sanford and Weiner themselves, whose fates are yet to be determined. It also includes 58 disgraced ex-pols who never even attempted comebacks, although this fact in and of itself is instructive, in my opinion. Still, peel away these quibbles, and politicians who left office in disgrace still have a poor .286 batting average (2 out of 7) when they try to come back from obscurity and regain public office.

My findings conspicuously clash with a prominent recent study that found that most scandal-plagued politicians actually pull through just fine. Political scientist Scott Basinger compiled a database of 237 naughty congressmen and found that, while they have a lower political survival rate than their unblemished colleagues, they still returned to Congress more often than not. Specifically, 73% of embattled congressmen stuck it out and contested another general election (versus 91% in the control group); 81% of those went on to win, making for a total survival rate of 60%.

Without Basinger's full data set, I can't say for certain why his findings are so divergent from mine. I'd probably point to three key differences in our methodology. First, I looked at all federal and statewide elected officials, while Basinger limited himself to US congressmen. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Basinger went all the way back to 1973, while I stopped at 1993. I tend to believe that more recent data are more reliable—even cases from 20 years ago are of limited value in the age of social media, if you ask me—but Basinger's doubly large sample size could certainly account for our disagreement.

Third, while I don't know how Basinger conducted his research, mine consisted mainly of a heck of a lot of Googling. I'm almost certain that I missed out on a few scandals, especially going back to the 1990s when the archives of the World Wide Web grow thin. Still, because of the nature of internet research, I'm fairly confident that I documented all of the most high-profile scandals of the past 20 years. Basinger, in contrast, doubtlessly included even the most obscure misconduct in his database. Again, while more data points are usually good, in this case it might be more instructive to look solely at the high-profile cases. They are the ones most closely relatable to Sanford and Weiner, and they predictably prove more damaging to politicians' public personas. It's probably not helpful to skew our predictions for two notorious adulterers with politicians who coasted to reelection after abusing the franking privilege, for instance.

Indeed, I completely trust Basinger's methodology and his findings, and I'm perfectly willing to believe that 60% of overall offenders tough it out and go on to live completely normal and healthy political lives. Indeed, a decent slice of my dataset did that very thing. I'm even willing to admit that my dataset is flawed in that it probably undercounts the number of politicians who defied calls to resign and weathered the storm (again, it's easier to find internet archives of big news events like "SENATOR X RESIGNS"). My research may very well be inconclusive about this cadre.

But it doesn't matter, because we're talking about politicians who didn't survive—who, like Weiner and Sanford, fell to the deepest depths of shame and ignominy—and then climbed back to a position of prominence, power, and popularity. About them, there can be little doubt that full-blown comebacks from rock bottom do not happen. Basinger does not address this specific type of case in his study, leaving my data—66 out of 68, remember—as our only guide.

The reason that the media's examples of political comebacks—meant to convince us that Sanford and Weiner really can do it—actually bear no resemblance or relationship to Sanford's and Weiner's utter implosions is that there almost literally are no political phoenix stories. All of the most famous "comeback" stories—Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Wilbur Mills, David Vitter—are of politicians who never resigned in the first place. They recognized that their best strategy was to deny, defer, or deflect guilt as quickly as possible and move on. By the time they faced the voters again, their transgressions were either forgotten or overshadowed.

But for those who admit fault—or, perhaps more accurately, admit that they ought to be punished for it by resigning or otherwise leaving office—the path to public forgiveness is much less clear. If you're a scandalized politician, at least you still have your office and a platform from which to build yourself back up (including the significant electoral advantage of incumbency). Step down, and you're nothing but a broken man. Leaving office in disgrace has been a black mark from which there has almost never been any coming back. The media and 24-hour news networks may love comeback stories, but there's little evidence the public does.

We've taken our time to come back around to the bottom line for Weiner and Sanford, so here it is: they're probably finished, even if they don't know it yet. For Weiner, going from disrepute to the extremely powerful position of New York City mayor in the space of two years is just too big of a jump. Even the one ex-representative who returned to local government did so to city council, and she endured an ethics investigation, not Weiner's sensationalist sex scandal and its attendant national humiliation. A comeback by Weiner would be unprecedented in modern American politics.

Sanford, while still an unlikely candidate, may have slightly better odds. For one thing, he has already won one election—the GOP primary—which is half the hurdle. For another, he holds a key advantage over Weiner: he never resigned. Despite the equal amount of ridicule and embarrassment he faced with his "Appalachian Trail" saga, Sanford actually served out the remaining two years of his term as governor and was effective at fading out of the spotlight rather than going out with a bang. However, polls indicate Sanford is still badly underperforming a generic Republican, and, after this week's revelations of further family troubles resulted in his abandonment by the NRCC, the former governor is now looking decidedly like an underdog. All in all, I would be surprised to see him buck history here.

Your Quick and Dirty Guide to the #SC01 Special Election

Unlike our first special election this year, the race for the South Carolina First—vacated by Tim Scott when he was appointed to Jim DeMint's Senate seat—could sport a competitive general election, a rarity in the deep-red Palmetto State. The First District came within four points of electing a Democrat in 2008 (admittedly, under different district lines), and this year's almost-certain Democratic nominee, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, is a formidable candidate—in case you've been living under a rock, she has access to the deep pockets and national microphone of her brother Stephen.

But in this R+11 district, the likely next congressman from the Lowcountry remains the victor of the Republican primary, which takes place here on Tuesday. The problem is that we have no idea who's going to be that victor—or if we'll even know by Wednesday, thanks to South Carolina primary rules that require the winning candidate to get a majority of the vote. (With a field of 16 Republican candidates, it seems likely that we'll be forced into a runoff between the top two; that runoff would occur on April 2.)

The most famous of these candidates is, of course, ex-governor, former rumored presidential candidate, and Appalachian Trail hiker Mark Sanford. After his 2009 affair with an Argentine woman (whom he has since left his family to get engaged to), Sanford actually served out the rest of his gubernatorial term, retiring silently into the night in 2011. Only two years later, he's apparently ready for a political comeback, and he's mounting it in the same district where he got his start (he was the First District's congressman from 1995 to 2001). Right now, Sanford is the near-certain frontrunner in the 2013 special just because of name recognition (he's famous with a national audience, so imagine how crisply South Carolinians remember him). He also has a boatload of money; he already had approximately $120,000 left over from his old congressional campaign account, and he raised $334,397 more in January and February alone.

The other 15 Republicans are therefore probably racing for the second spot in the runoff. We can safely rule out probably half of this group, but, excitingly, there is a lot of uncertainty as to how seriously, exactly, to take each of the so-called serious candidates. One formidable contender, and probably the one with the second-highest name recognition, is Teddy Turner, who has distanced himself from the liberal views of his famous father and namesake. Thanks to his own wealth, Turner raised even more than Sanford ($376,433) during the same period. Former Charleston City Council member Curtis Bostic is also generating buzz—though not cash—as a conservative grassroots candidate. But he may be hurt by the revelation that he actually doesn't live in the First District. (Awkward.)

A trio of Columbia veterans are the remaining realistic candidates, thanks in large part to loans to their own campaigns. Former State Senator John Kuhn loaned himself $500K for a total take of $550,103 in two months. He has gone after Sanford the most aggressively, even boasting about the longevity of his marriage at a recent debate. State Representative Chip Limehouse collected $540,115, including a $400,000 loan to his own campaign. A member of an old Charleston family, Limehouse has received several high-profile endorsements (though these are often meaningless in a race like this). And State Senator Larry Grooms raked in $323,815, only $100,000 of which was a personal loan.

It's anyone's guess where these candidates stand in relation to one another; there have been no public polls of the race whatsoever. All the data we have to go off are in the form of internal polling whose specific numbers were never actually reported—we just have vague approximations from (probably biased) anonymous sources! The great local reporter Gina Smith has talked to these people about "several" polls, and she relays that Sanford holds a comfortable lead in all of them with about a third of the vote—not nearly enough to avoid a runoff. Apparently, however, the polls disagree about who is in second, with Limehouse, Turner, and Kuhn mentioned as the "most often" runners-up. Grooms and Bostic are also "making gains," she reports.

Unapologetically opinionated website FITSNews also talked to some sources about some specific polls. You probably shouldn't heed these as much as Smith's holistic approach, but they're worth sharing. A poll reported on March 6 found that Sanford's "forgiveness" ad (attempting to address his affair) hurt him, dragging him from the mid-thirties to the mid-twenties. Bostic was apparently the candidate who benefited, shooting up to the "upper teens." (Indeed, all reports are that Bostic has momentum. Could the grassroots candidate eke out a win?) In a close third was Turner, and in a close fourth was Grooms. Limehouse slid into fifth place, although FITSNews registers some serious doubt that he could be so low. A week later, FITSNews shared a separate poll with some slightly different results. Sanford was back near 30%, while Turner and Bostic shared second in the "low teens." Limehouse and Grooms occupied the "high single digits."

Here's an overview of the polling that's hopefully easier to digest. Remember, these are all internal polls (and we don't even know whose campaign did which poll), so take them with huge grains of salt.

	3/6	3/13	Gina Smith roundup
Mark Sanford	~23–27%	~27–29%	~31–36%
Teddy Turner	~14–18%	~11–15%	"most often following" Sanford
Curtis Bostic	~16–19%	~11–15%	"making gains"
John Kuhn	N/A	N/A	"most often following" Sanford
Larry Grooms	~12–17%	~6–9%	"making gains"
Chip Limehouse	~3–9%	~6–9%	"most often following" Sanford

So who has the edge for second place? The composition of the district could be a clue. If you look at a map of the district, you'll see it hugs the southern half of the South Carolina coastline, from Francis Marion National Forest down to Hilton Head. However, there's an odd growth to the district that protrudes north of Charleston, pushing inland to Lake Moultrie (but conveniently bypassing heavily black—and Democratic—North Charleston). According to Dave Wasserman's excellent spreadsheet, the district is 70.1% white, 19.4% black, and 6.5% Hispanic, although in a Republican primary, that's not likely to matter a whole lot.

By far, most of the votes in the district can be found in Charleston County; the state's largest city and the county that runs up and down the coast around it accounted for 41.3% of the total votes cast in the 2012 congressional race here. Three of the frontrunners—Sanford, Kuhn, and Limehouse—hail from Charleston itself, while a fourth (Turner) lives in the adjacent suburb of Mount Pleasant. Now, Sanford is likely to draw his votes equally from all corners of the district due to his general name recognition. Turner has never held elected office and is not better known in Mount Pleasant than elsewhere, so he too seems unlikely to get a regional boost; indeed, his support should be wide thanks to airing more TV ads than anyone else. That leaves Kuhn and Limehouse to split what's left of the Charleston vote—so about 10% of the total district vote, at most, each. That squares with their positions in the polling, and it's simply not enough to break the top-two threshold by itself. Since they don't figure to pick up much more support outside Charleston, I'd say the math just isn't there for those two.

Grooms is an interesting case because he has the district's third-largest county, Berkeley, all to himself. A native of Bonneau, in the northern protuberance part of the district, Grooms could lock up a significant share of the 19.5% of 2012 voters who live in Berkeley County. The problem may be Curtis Bostic. As the grassroots Tea Party candidate, Bostic could also stand to win a lot of votes in this, the district's reddest county in 2012. (I'm not counting the district's sliver of Colleton County, where Tim Scott received 540 of 649 total votes cast.) Not living in the district himself, Bostic doesn't really have a regional base, but look for him to run up the count in some of the district's more rural areas thanks to his evangelical base. While Grooms probably does have a golden opportunity in Berkeley County, it's close to impossible to eke out a win working exclusively out of an area containing only a fifth of the total vote share.

A real wild card is Beaufort County, which is the district's second-most populous area and home to Hilton Head Island. No candidates hail from this region on the southern end of the South Carolina coast, so theoretically those votes are up for grabs. Look for the candidates with the district-wide strategies, like Sanford and Turner, to do well here. (Bostic maybe less so, since this is the second bluest county in the district... Although remember this is relative, since every county is solidly Republican.)

The bottom line is this: anyone who thinks they can tell you with any kind of certainty who the two runoff finalists will be is conning you. But right now, given the regional splits of too many of the candidates, I have to lean toward the two who have district-wide appeal. My for-entertainment-purposes-only guess: Sanford 35%, Turner 20%—two points ahead of Bostic in third place.