Stephen Colbert's Sister Wins: Will She Face Former 'Appalachian Trail' Gov?

Stephen Colbert's sister won her primary battle Tuesday to become the Democratic nominee to represent South Carolina's First Congressional District. She will face stiff Republican competition from the winner of an upcoming runoff election. In two weeks, former Gov. Marshall "Mark" Sanford Jr. will face off with former Charleston City Councilman Curtis Bostic. Neither candidate received the required 50 percent of the vote as a number of well-known candidates were on the ballot, including Teddy Turner, the son of the CNN magnate. Colbert Busch will face the winner of the runoff later this year.

Elizabeth Colbert Busch will be receiving high profile support from the Comedy Central satirist, who is noted for naming the scandal that plagued former the governor the "Governor of the Appalachian Trail." Mark Sanford, who formerly held the First District seat over a decade ago, is well remembered for the high profile way in which he allegedly cheated on his wife, Jenny.

He was accused in 2009 of cheating on Jenny Sanford with an Argentinian woman whom he would fly to the South American country to meet. He allegedly instructed his peers to report that he was instead off hiking the Appalachian Trail, the east coast's topographic backbone which runs from Maine to Georgia. Reports surfaced declaring Sanford is now engaged to his former mistress, María Belén Chapur.

Mark Sanford recently made waves when he asked his ex-wife to run his current Congressional campaign. She of course turned him down.

"What mother in her right mind would ever want to watch her children see all of their father's trash rehashed again," Jenny Sullivan Sanford told New York Magazine.

Prior to his affair, Gov. Sanford was a common guest on Fox News Channel and other media outlets,. He was considered by some to be a possible 2012 presidential contender.

Stephen Colbert told CNN he would be willing to break character, a partial satire of journalist Bill O'Reilly whom he calls "Papa Bear," to help his big sister win.

The seat is currently vacant after Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., was tapped to replace Jim DeMint who resigned to become president of the Heritage Foundation after Dr. Ed Feulner retired last year. The district, which follows the US-17 corridor along the coast from the North Carolina line in Horry County to just south of Charleston, has seen its share of high-profile representatives in addition to Sanford and Scott.

Its first representative to Washington, William L. Smith, became President John Quincy Adams' Ambassador to Portugal. Smith's successor, Rep. Thomas Pinckney, a Federalist, was the brother of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. More recently, Republican Arthur Ravenel, Jr., is most noted for seeking funding to replace an aging yet vitally important link to the city of Charleston from the north. Route 17, a heavily-traveled coastal highway running from just outside Washington D.C. and along the Atlantic beginning in the Norfolk, Va., area southward to Florida, received a facelift when a grand eight-lane cable stayed bridge which bears his name replaced a very old cantilever span of the Cooper River in 2005.