Will S.C. voters trust trysting Mark Sanford?

This is shaping up as quite a news day. President Obama unveiled his strategies to fight gun violence and former S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford has thrown his hat into the race for his old seat in Congress.

The gun debate has already ramped up to dizzying heights with U.S. congressman Steve Stockman of Texas comparing Obama to Iran's murderous maniac dictator Saddam Hussein. More to come from both sides of that debate as this fight continues. Hopefully reason will prevail on this issue.

But back to Sanford. You remember him, right? He of the Appalachian Trail-Argentine mistress-where-the-heck-is-the-governor fame? He wants the seat in the House of Representatives that Tim Scott vacated when Gov. Nikki Haley appointed him to the U.S. Senate to complete the term of former Sen. Jim DeMint.

Sanford wisely didn't mention his mischief with his mistress in the written announcement today of his plan to run for South Carolina's 1st Congressional District seat that he held before he became S.C. governor. He said: "I am running because our country's future is at stake if we don't get our hands around runaway government spending in Washington.. And given our nation's long-term financial problems, we need more who have shown themselves to be leaders in standing up to the big spenders, regardless of party."

Sanford isn't paying attention. There is no dearth of Republicans in this or the last Congress professing to be leaders who stand up to big spenders. But he may be unique in having left the state he was governing - without the knowledge of political leaders or even law enforcement officials -for several days for a tryst with his mistress - and then lied to and misled the public about his whereabouts. He said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. He was in Argentina. Maybe he got those "A" names confused.

Will S.C. voters be able to forgive and forget, and more importantly, trust him to be honest in the future? We'll see.

The special election is in May.

Unfortunately, we won't have the treat of seeing him run against his former wife Jenny Sanford. She divorced Sanford in 2010 after learning of the affair and is held in higher regard in the state than Sanford. She said recently she won't run for the seat.