(Photo courtesy SC Office of the Governor)
Republican Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina admitted to a year-long adulterous affair today. Following the example of philandering Republican Senator John Ensign, he resigned his party leadership position. Mr. Sanford was chairman of the Republican Governors Association.
Like Senator Ensign, Mark Sanford was considered a strong GOP presidential contender. Unlike Mr. Ensign, Governor Sanford did not have the common decency to violate his marriage vows on American soil with an employee or a friend’s wife, but outsouced his adultery to Argentina, a politically unwise move in a state that has seen most of its textile industry decamp for Latin America and Asia.
While the Governor was enjoying his privacy at a foreign location unknown to his wife and staff, the South Carolina State Legislature overrode ten of his vetoes. This followed a recent South Carolina Supreme Court ruling that reversed the Governor’s decision not to accept additional Federal funds for the unemployed people of his state.
Some days it doesn’t even pay to get out of your Argentinian mistress’s bed.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Tags: adultery, GOP, Mark Sanford, Republicans, sex, South Carolina
NotionsCapital 
June 24, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I don’t think that the affair was outsourced, but rather he had to travel to another hemisphere to find someone willing. It’s hard to get that pig smell off.
June 25, 2009 at 12:43 am
Anybody heard the full name of Sanford’s Argentine firecracker?
Nope. They’re keeping it secret, and guess why.
Just check the governor’s public statements fto answer to the question of what really threatens the link between husbands and wives: “Maria” is a married homosexual.
June 25, 2009 at 12:48 am
Update: “Sanford and Ensign called on Clinton to resign after his affair,” LA Times blog.
June 25, 2009 at 1:55 am
<
a href=”http://www.entornoeconomico.com/pictures/Beatriz-Nofal-1.jpg” rel=”nofollow”>Maria Beatriz Nofal [Dr. Nofal, economist and president of the National Agency of Investment Development, seems to use “Beatriz” as her first name in daily life — ml]The Argentine press is already hinting.
She arrived two days late for a French wine expo.
[Not so fast! See below!]
June 25, 2009 at 9:11 am
[See update below]
goldstone: Dr. Nofal was missing in action for two days, a period which seems to have overlapped with Governor Sanford’s fictional Appalachian Trail hike.Her bio, from Entorno Económico:
Beatriz Nofal has a degree in Sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and a Ph.D. in Economic Development of the Johns Hopkins University, with postgraduate studies in Development Planning and Urban and Regional Development at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands, and University of Paris, France. She has been president of the National Agency of Investment Development since October 2006. She was deputy national secretary of Industry and Commerce. She was president of Eco-Axis Consulting SA, an external consultant for the Interamerican Development Bank and World Bank, and a corporate board member. She also taught at universities in Brazil and abroad (MIT, Johns Hopkins, University of Toronto) and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.
Mark Sandford went to Furman University.
Okay, he went to UVA, too (he got an MBA, like our last president) and worked on Wall Street at admitted economy-destroyer Goldman Sachs.
More information on Dr. Nofal here and here.
Read about Jenny Sanford here.
June 25, 2009 at 4:01 pm
A linguistic quibble – notwithstanding the fact that the source article used both terms, vetoes are overridden, not overturned. The veto still exists, but it has been made of no effect as a result of the subsequent legislative override.
[Right you are. I’ll change that. – ml]
June 25, 2009 at 7:16 pm
UPDATE — WRONG “MARIA?”
There are now reports that Mark Sanford’s extra-curricular lover is María Belén Shapur, 43-year-old divorced mother of two and a marathon runner.
See also:
New York Daily News
UPDATE: María Belén Shapur worked for Canal America TV as a translator and reporter, and covered the 9/11 crisis in New York for the network.
More here.
In case you missed it: ”
“Sanford met with mistress on taxpayer-funded trip.”
“Sanford’s trade mission to Argentina contradicted U.S. policy.”
June 26, 2009 at 8:20 pm
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June 29, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Update:
See this review of Susan Wise Bauer’s book The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America (Princeton University Press).
June 30, 2009 at 2:01 am
Update:
Was it an allusion to Gerard Manley Hopkins or Kierkegaard?
Don’t miss this exegesis of the Sanford statement.
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