SOUTH Carolina governor Mark Sanford has rejected calls from fellow Republicans to resign after he admitted this week to more trysts with an Argentinian woman and to “crossing lines” with other women.
The head of South Carolina’s law enforcement division said yesterday that an investigation had shown no evidence of any misuse of public funds in connection with the governor’s affair with Maria Belen Chapur. But more than half the Republicans in South Carolina’s state senate have publicly called on Mr Sanford to go, as have six of the state’s biggest newspapers.
“The governor has no plans to step aside, temporarily or otherwise. He remains committed and determined to repair the damage he has done in his marriage and to building back the trust of the people of South Carolina,” Mr Sanford’s office said in a statement.
The affair with Ms Chapur came to light when Mr Sanford disappeared last month without telling his wife or staff where he was going.
Some of the governor’s closest colleagues turned against him this week after an emotional three-hour interview with the Associated Press. During the interview, Mr Sanford described Ms Chapur as his “soulmate” and insisted that their relationship was more than just sex.
“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” he said, “a forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”
Mr Sanford said he had met Ms Chapur five times during the past year, including a meeting in New York he described as a failed attempt to end the relationship. By this time, the governor’s wife, Jenny, knew about the affair and she knew about the New York encounter.
When Mr Sanford failed to end the affair, his wife threw him out, telling him not to get in touch.
“We reached a point where I felt it was important to look my sons in the eyes and maintain my dignity, self-respect and my basic sense of right and wrong. I therefore asked my husband to leave,” Mrs Sanford said.
The governor said this week that he was trying to fall in love with his wife again, although he acknowledged that his enduring feelings for Ms Chapur remained an obstacle.
“I don’t want to blow up my time in politics. 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,” he said. “But if I’m completely honest, there are still feelings in the way.”
South Carolina Republican senator Jim De Mint said that offering more details about the relationship was “not a wise thing to do in this business”.
“They say, when you are explaining, you are losing. And particularly on that subject, I think, he was,” Mr De Mint said.
“He’s dropped the flag. The rest of us have to get up and go on. A lot of us are talking to him behind the scenes in hopes that he’ll make the right decision about what needs to be done.”