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Pressure Mounting on South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford to Resign

Posted July 1, 2009

By David Saltonstall
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

A day after calling his Argentine mistress his "soul-mate," more and more South Carolinians were calling Wednesday for something else: Gov. Mark Sanford's resignation.

In all, 12 of 27 Republican state senators have now urged Sanford to call it quits, after he publicly pined over his mistress and revealed on Tuesday that he had "crossed lines" with other women during his 20-year marriage.

"It's as though we're looking at a completely different person—one we didn't know existed," Sen. Larry Martin, the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules committee, told The State newspaper.

In addition, at least six South Carolina newspapers called on Sanford to resign. They included The Greenville News, which as recently as Sunday editorialized that Sanford's resignation would be too damaging to the state.

But the governor's disclosure on Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press that he had "crossed lines" with other women—although not the "sex line", he insisted—led the paper to change its mind.

"He has rendered himself incapable of serving the remainder of his term," it declared.

In the AP interview, Sanford, 49, detailed some seven liaisons with this Argentine mistress, Maria Belen Chapur, an athletic, 41-year-old former TV journalist and mother of two. Four of those meetings took place in New York City or the Hamptons.

He called Chapur his "soul-mate" but insisted he was working hard to try and fall back in love with his wife, First Lady Jenny Sanford, with whom the governor has four young sons.

"I don't want to blow up my time in politics," he told the AP. "I don't want to blow up future earning power, I don't want to blow up the kids' lives. I don't want to blow up 20 years that we've invested [in our marriage]."

But in the same breath he conceded that he still pines for Chapur.

"If I'm completely honest, there are still feelings in the way," he added. "If we keep pushing it this way, we get those to die off, but they're still there and they're still real."

Sanford's spokesman, Joel Sawyer, has said the governor will not step down, and that his purpose in pouring out his heart was "to have a full accounting of what he's done."

"He's determined to remain on as governor and determined to continue the work of this administration," Sawyer said.

The drumbeat for Sanford's resignation grew considerably louder Tuesday night, after Sanford's latest revelations, when seven senators jointly issued a letter demanding that he leave office because he has lost the trust of South Carolinians.

"The bottom line is that the Governor's private matters should remain private," they wrote, "but his deception and negligence make it impossible for us to trust him, and for him to govern in the future."