The biggest takeaway from Mark Sanford's victory last night is that you still need to field a competent candidate against even mortally wounded, but well-known, opposition. If your biggest selling point for your candidate is "But she's the sister of the host of a modestly rated cable comedy-news show who refuses to take any real stances!" you're going to lose. Period.
The second biggest takeaway, however, is this: Despite what you may have heard, money still can't buy elections.
Check out this breakdown of outside spending over at the Washington Post:
[The pro-Elizabeth Colbert Busch] House Majority PAC and the DCCC have been by far the biggest outside spenders. Taken together, the two groups spent about $884,000 on independent expenditures. Sanford has gotten no help from the NRCC. His biggest ally has been Independent Women’s Voice, a conservative-leaning non-profit organization. which has poured in about $160,000.
Despite that huge influx of filthy, horrible, no-good-very-bad outside cash, Mark Sanford still won. Handily. 54-45. Cook rates the district R+10. So all that cash might—MIGHT—have bought a candidate one point against a politician who resigned in disgrace just a few years ago after a huge scandal. But it probably didn't.
This is, of course, not an isolated incident. Time and again we've seen wealthy individuals dump money into races only to lose, and handily. Here's Bruce Bartlett, writing in the Fiscal Times:
It is for this reason that having the most money is not the ticket to electoral success that everyone assumes it is. For example, if one examines the list of candidates who donate at least $1 million to their own campaigns, you see that they generally lose. In 2010, only 12 of 58 candidates doing so won. Among the losers was Linda McMahon, who spent more than $50 million in the tiny state of Connecticut and still lost. (She may have a better chance this year, however.) Jeff Greene spent $24 million running for the Senate in Florida and couldn’t even win the primary.
A similar story is told in other years as well. In 2008, millionaire candidates won only 11 of 51 races; in 2006, they won only 5 of 42 races; in 2004, only one millionaire candidate won out of 30 who ran that year; and in 2002, only 3 out of 32 candidates won.
After years of whinging about Citizens United and the impact of dirty, awful money and dark spending and blabbity blah blah can we finally retire the busted old talking point about people buying elections? It's really quite tiresome.