South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday to an affair, and resigned his position as chair of the Republican Governor's Association following a strange week in which the governor dropped off the grid and could not be located.
“I have been unfaithful to my wife. I developed a relationship with what started out as a dear, dear friend from Argentina,” Sanford said in a rambling and often emotional news conference at the state capital in Columbia.
“I’m a bottom line kind of guy I’m just gonna lay it out. It’s gonna hurt and I’m going to let the chips fall where they may,” said Sanford, often touted as a potential 2012 presidential hopeful.
The Governor of South Carolina was not hiking, at least not in the United States as his staff said he was, but instead was in South America:
Sanford Resurfaces — From Argentina
By KATE PHILLIPS
Updated The whereabouts of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford this past week just became a bit more curious, as if they hadn’t already stirred quite a bit of chatter in his home state and beyond.
Earlier this morning, Gina Smith, a reporter for The State newspaper in Columbia, S. C., acted on a tip and confronted the governor at the Atlanta airport as he deplaned from, uh, not the Appalachian Trail as his staff had finally disclosed on Monday night, but Buenos Aires.
In a short interview, he told Ms. Smith that he didn’t know why his staff said he was hiking, although he conceded that he had considered that activity as a way to take a break after a bruising legislative session ended last week.
“But I said ‘no’ I wanted to do something exotic,” Mr. Sanford told Ms. Smith. “… It’s a great city.”
The governor said he had been traveling alone. Ms. Smith said she asked him if he had been staying at a hotel, but he wouldn’t answer her question.
Update: Mr. Sanford’s spokesman, Joel Sawyer, just sent out a notice saying the governor would hold a news conference at 2 p.m. in the Statehouse.
The governor’s mysterious disappearance had captured national attention in part because the governor is frequently talked about among conservative Republicans as a potential candidate for the presidency. But it also unfolded in a bizarre way, with his wife Jenny indicating that she wasn’t aware of his traveling plans over the Father’s Day weekend and with rival Republicans in the state contending that the governor’s staff had lied to them.
Various staff members had told reporters that they were unable to reach him. But Ms. Smith said in an interview with CNN this morning that obviously, someone knew his whereabouts because of the tip she received and because he was whisked away by someone who met him at the airport.
In the airport interview today, Mr. Sanford suggested that he was confounded by how his absence was “blown out of proportion.”
This story was not "blown out of proportion." Governor, unless you have forgotten, you are in charge of a State. The staff and officials in the state need to be able to contact you. You should, of course, have vacations, but keep in contact or leave a method to be found. You running a state, not working at the local Starbucks!
You can get fired for now showing up to work without explanation in some jobs. I guess in South Carolina, they make you governor.
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