COLUMBIA, S.C. — After going AWOL for seven days, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday that he had flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he was having an affair. Wiping away tears, he apologized to his family and gave up a national Republican Party post, but was silent on whether he would resign.
“I’ve been unfaithful to my wife,” he said in a news conference in which the 49-year-old governor ruminated on God’s law, moral absolutes and following one’s heart. He said he spent the last five days “crying in Argentina.”
Sanford, who in recent months had been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, said he would resign as head of the Republican Governors Association.
By leaving the country without formally transferring power, critics said he neglected his gubernatorial authority and put the state at risk. It wasn’t clear how his staff could reach him in an emergency.
At least one state lawmaker called for his resignation. As a congressman, Sanford voted in favor of three of four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, citing the need for “moral legitimacy.”
The affair is now over, Sanford said, describing the woman who lives in Argentina as a “dear, dear friend” whom he has known for about eight years and been romantically involved with for about a year. He said he has seen her three times since the affair began, and his wife found out about it five months ago. A newspaper published steamy e-mails between Sanford and the woman. He did not identify her.
One e-mail from the governor read: “I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light — but hey, that would be going into sexual details.”
“What I did was wrong. Period,” Sanford said at the news conference. His family did not attend, and his wife Jenny Sanford said she asked the governor to leave and stop speaking to her two weeks ago. The governor said he wants to reconcile, and his wife’s statement said her husband has earned a chance to resurrect their marriage.
“This trial separation was agreed to with the goal of ultimately strengthening our marriage,” she said.
Sanford denied instructing his staff to cover up his affair, but acknowledged that he told them he thought he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail and never corrected that impression after leaving for South America.
“I let them down by creating a fiction with regard to where I was going,” Sanford said. “I said that was the original possibility. Again, this is my fault in … shrouding this larger trip.”
When news first broke about his mysterious disappearance, Jenny Sanford said she did not know where her husband and father of their four sons had gone for the Father’s Day weekend. She said he needed time away to write.
Sanford emerged Wednesday afternoon at the news conference, where he mused openly of his love of hiking and how he used to guide trips along the Appalachian Trail, and eventually tearfully apologized to his wife, his staff and his friends — but without yet saying what he was apologizing for.
“I hurt a lot of different folks,” he said, occasionally choking up throughout the news conference that lasted about 20 minutes.
With those watching still wondering what he was admitting, Sanford said: “The odyssey that we’re all on in life is with regard to heart.”
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