I suspect the only reasons he won are:
A. his opponent, the one that outspent him by 3 to 1, didn't even bother to have a platform. She was simply the stooge of Nancy Pelosi and had no clue how to campaign and refused to debate. Like him or don't like him, but he seems to know how to campaign the old school way.
B. a large section of the population doesn't want to see the plastic surgery queen as speaker of the house. She is marginally more dangerous than the cry baby.
I do appreciate them trucking in $1.2M to help out the SC economy though.