CHARLESTON, S.C.
Two days before special-election runoff for South Carolina’s 1st District Republican nomination, the two campaigns are making their closing arguments while staffers and volunteers are hard at work in the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort. Former Gov. Mark Sanford took out a full-page ad in Sunday’s Post and Courier, Charleston’s leading newspaper. The ad features a large photo of the candidate and his four sons, and his closing argument hits heavy on fiscal issues and personal accessibility.

Absent from the ad? Sanford’s ex-wife. Also missing? His fiancée, Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine woman who was at the center of the 2009 scandal that resulted in the then-governor being censured by the state legislature and fined $74,000 for ethics violations.

Sanford’s run-off opponent Curtis Bostic spent Easter Sunday in church and with his family; his campaign staff and volunteers took a holiday from field operations. The Bostic campaign sent out a full-color mailer on Friday describing the Marine Corps veteran and former Charleston County councilman as a “fiscally conservative leader we can trust.”

Tuesday’s runoff will decide which of the two Republicans faces Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of TV comedian Stephen Colbert, in the May 7 special election to fill the House seat vacated by Tim Scott’s appointment to the Senate.