NBC News reports:
Hours after a last-minute broadside from President Donald Trump, South Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Sanford lost his primary race on Tuesday night, according to The Associated Press, possibly ushering in an end to a political career plagued by a major scandal.
With 99 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, state Rep. Katie Arrington had 50.5 percent with 32,441 votes to Sanford’s 46.5 percent with 29,899 votes. Arrington needed over 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff.
Arrington, a political newcomer who has held her seat since 2016, spent the campaign blasting Sanford — who had never lost an election — over his lack of loyalty to Trump and attacked him in ads for a much-publicized extra-marital affair with an Argentinian journalist. Trump hit Sanford for the affair, too.
My political representatives didn’t want me to get involved in the Mark Sanford primary thinking that Sanford would easily win – but with a few hours left I felt that Katie was such a good candidate, and Sanford was so bad, I had to give it a shot. Congrats to Katie Arrington!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2018