Share
Calls for S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford's resignation escalated Tuesday after he revealed more liaisons with his Argentine mistress and acknowledged that he had “crossed lines” with other women.
The revelations came during an emotional interview with The Associated Press that further shook the political landscape. While describing his Argentine affair as “a love story,” Sanford contradicted statements he made in first acknowledging it last week.
“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” Sanford, at times crying, told the AP in an interview. “A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”
He called Chapur his soul mate, but said he's trying to fall back in love with his wife, Jenny.
The comments outraged fellow Republicans and former supporters.
“My guess is that it's an emotional breakdown,” said Katon Dawson, immediate past chairman of the state Republican Party. “It takes a bad situation and moves it to worse … He's so emotional now he wants to tell everybody everything.”
On Tuesday night, six of 27 members of the conservative Senate Republican Caucus issued a letter calling on Sanford to resign.
“Gov. Sanford has imposed a crisis upon our state,” it said. “… He has lost the trust of the people and the legislature to lead our state.”
The letter was crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee and marked a major break in the silence of the General Assembly, which has the authority to remove the governor.
Some of Sanford's strongest Senate allies also urged him to step aside.
“It's time for him to resign,” said Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, who generally supports Sanford's agenda. “We've heard from some people in recent days who separate the bedroom from the board room. I don't. I look at the whole character of a person, the decisions they make and their dealings with their families.”
Also Tuesday, S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster called for an investigation into Sanford's use of state money to see his mistress in New York and elsewhere.
State Law Enforcement Division director Reggie Lloyd said agents are reviewing documents supplied by Sanford's office about his travels to determine whether any state laws have been broken.
“I have nothing, absolutely nothing that he used taxpayer money for anything (improper),” Lloyd told reporters late Tuesday.
5 meetings this year
Last week, Sanford returned from a six-day absence during which even aides were in the dark about his whereabouts. At a news conference June 24, he acknowledged spending five days “crying in Argentina” with his mistress, later identified as Maria Belen Chapur of Buenos Aires. He said he had four meetings with her.
But Tuesday he told the AP they'd had five meetings over the past year alone, including two romantic, multi-night stays in New York. He said they'd met in 2001 on an open-air dance floor in Uruguay and started an online correspondence that would later include erotic e-mails obtained by The State newspaper of Columbia.
“The thing that erodes his credibility the most is that this clearly was not straying from his wife, this was an emotional affair,” said political scientist Scott Huffmon of Winthrop University. “This was more than a sexual dalliance. That is what I think is the most cringe-worthy.”
In the interview, Sanford also said he “crossed the lines” with a handful of other women during 20 years of marriage, but not as far as with Chapur. “There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn't have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line,” he said.
He said he wanted to end the affair with Chapur and got his wife's permission to go to New York earlier this year with a “trusted spiritual adviser” as chaperone. He said the three went to church and dinner together before parting ways. But then he flew down to see her again last month.
“I just don't know when the next shoe is going to fall,” said Sen. Wes Hayes of Rock Hill.
In an interview with The (Columbia) State, Hayes said he was already close to calling for Sanford's resignation before Tuesday's revelations.
“I think this just may push me over,” he said.
Hayes, who is chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, said he, “owes it to the office of governor” to sleep on his decision. He said he would announce it today.
To Republican Sen. Mick Mulvaney of Indian Land, the whole situation has gotten “more and more bizarre.”
“If you wanted to self-destruct,” Mulvaney said, “you'd be hard pressed to do it any better than he's doing it.”
Governor repays $3,000
Sanford told the AP he is fit to govern and has no plans to resign. “I've been able to do my job and in fact excel at it,” Sanford said, while acknowledging he is a spectator at his “own political funeral.”
Sanford delivered a personal check late Tuesday for nearly $3,000 to reimburse the state for a 2008 state-funded trip to Argentina where he visited Chapur, and he insists no public money was used for any other meetings with her. State Commerce Department records indicate more than $8,000 was spent on airfare, lodging and meals for the trip.
Critics in both parties said they're as concerned about Sanford's use of public money and last month's abrupt departure as about his infidelity.
House Speaker Bobby Harrell, who would chair any forced ouster of the governor by the Republican-controlled legislature, said it's premature to heed calls from those in his own party to remove Sanford.
But York County Republican chairman Glenn McCall has said if lawmakers don't pressure Sanford to resign, he'll organize a rally in Columbia against the governor.
With 18 months left in Sanford's term, the debate over whether he should resign has already prompted sniping between supporters of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, Attorney General McMaster and other would-be GOP contenders.
“Legislators deciding whether they want Mark Sanford to step down has a lot more to do with Election 2010 than Father's Day 2009,” said Huffmon. The (Columbia) State and The Associated Press contributed.
