Despite a very bad day for former Gov. Mark Sanford (R) yesterday — including the NRCC pulling the plug on financial support of his special election campaign — John Avlon says he may still pull off a victory.

“What we have here is a competitive congressional race in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress since the early years of the Reagan era. That itself is invigorating, and Colbert Busch has already proved herself a capable, engaging candidate with a will to win. But even without the NRCC, counting Sanford out is a sucker’s bet. Win or lose, he’ll be due in court to answer the charges May 7–either as the incoming congressman or on the heels of his first electoral defeat.”

The Cook Political Report calls the race a Toss Up.

GOP operative Andy Parrish, a former chief of staff to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), “is expected to tell an Iowa Senate ­ethics panel that her 2012 presidential campaign made improper payments to its state chairman,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

“Parrish’s willingness to go public against his former employer and political mentor is likely to send shock waves through Minnesota GOP circles, where both he and his attorney are well-known figures.”

Jason Zengerle: “Indeed, while Jenny has never come out and publicly opposed Mark’s congressional candidacy — choosing to remain officially neutral — she’s waged a brutally effective passive-aggressive campaign against it. Whether it was revealing to me that Mark had shamelessly asked her to manage his election bid; or telling the Washington Post that, until the night Mark’s fiancée showed up onstage at his victory party in April, one of her sons had never met the woman; or just generally making it known that she is furious that he’s running, Jenny has done a masterful job of keeping her ex-husband’s past (and not-so-past) transgressions in the news. She has seeded the ground with political land mines, stood back, and waited for Mark to step on one.”

In addition to a trespassing complaint, Jenny Sanford has accused former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) of shirking their divorce agreement on at least three other occasions, the Washington Post reports.

“She filed a complaint against him in March 2012 for violating the terms of having their sons on the Sanford family’s Coosaw plantation. The terms state that ‘no airplanes will be flown at the children.’ She has also accused him of failing to properly insure the property and of missing a child support payment.”

The Washington Post has learned that tensions within former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R) family “flared up as recently as April 2, at the celebration of Sanford’s runoff election victory when the former governor thrust two of his sons on-stage with the Argentine woman who was at the center of the spectacular sex scandal that broke up his marriage.”

It was the first time Sanford’s teenage son Bolton he had ever been in the presence of Maria Belen Chapur.

Jenny Sanford confirmed: “That was indeed Bolton’s first intro and both boys were quite upset and visibly so.”

National Republicans “are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford’s suddenly besieged congressional campaign,” Politico reports, “a potentially fatal blow” to his campaign against Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D).

“Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.”

The Week: Is Sanford sunk?

A Political Wire reader in South Carolina forwards the leaked documents that show former Gov. Mark Sanford (R) was ordered to explain why he should not be held “in contempt of court” at a hearing two days after the special congressional election.

The complaint refers to a “pattern of entering” his ex-wife’s house. Sanford has only admitted to doing so once to watch a football game with his son.

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