Stephen Colbert supports his sister in SC congressional race

By Patrick Kevin Day

March 18, 2013 12 AM PT

Stephen Colbert likes to tread the line of fiction and nonfiction with his conservative pundit character on “The Colbert Report,” but he’s putting the fictional part aside to help out his sister, who’s running for Congress in the siblings’ home state of South Carolina.

Colbert’s sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who works in business development for Clemson University, is running as a Democrat for the House of Representatives seat vacated by Republican Tim Scott when he moved to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat of retiring member Jim DeMint.

Colbert, whose nightly show on Comedy Central has been on hiatus for two weeks, appeared on the first episode of Jake Tapper’s new CNN show, “The Lead With Jake Tapper” and addressed his sister’s run.

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“I’m willing to, you know, break the jewel of my own creation to try to do something for her,” Colbert told Tapper. “Like I’m not worried about what it would do to me or my show to try to help her as myself, not as my character, to help her as myself. And you know, if people think that’s not the right thing for me to do, I don’t care. It’s my sister, and I’m willing to help her.”

Getting involved with politics isn’t new for Colbert, but he’s usually engaged with it behind a veneer of entertainment. During the 2012 election primaries, he started his own Super PAC and raised $1.2 million from 30,000 contributors. He also encouraged voters in the South Carolina Republican primary to vote for Herman Cain, a candidate who had already dropped out of the race. Colbert hosted a rally in the state in support of Cain.

As for his sister, Colbert told Tapper that his sister would not be spared from his mockery if she said something worth poking fun at on the campaign trail.

“I said, ‘If you do something funny, I’m making jokes about you,’ ” Colbert told Tapper. “But she won’t. Sure she will. She’s now a politician.”

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