Just when you think SC politics can’t get any wilder, this state will surprise you. Former governor and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, the man President Trump once said was better off in Argentina, is back.
Sanford, 66, declared this morning on X/Twitter that he “can’t sit on the sidelines while Washington adds a trillion dollars to the debt every 100 days.”
Our country is at a financial tipping point, and I can’t sit on the sidelines while Washington adds a trillion dollars to the debt every 100 days. I’ve spent my entire time in politics fighting this fight, and I’m running for U.S. Senate to keep the American dream alive for our… pic.twitter.com/q5ByORi0M3
— Mark Sanford (@MarkSanford) July 23, 2026
Sanford touts his record as a fiscal conservative. In his campaign video, he boasts that as governor he “held the line on spending as no other governor has done before” and during his service in Congress, he said he “was ranked first in all of Congress in efforts to protect your wallet or pocketbook.”
Though Sanford served three terms in the House of Representatives between 1995 and 2001, was elected twice as governor, then went back to Congress for five more years starting in 2013, he is best known for his romantic scandal in 2009. He disappeared from the state for five days, right over Father’s Day weekend. His office told the public he was off hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was romancing his mistress Maria Belén Chapur in Argentina.
The fallout led to his wife Jenny moving out several months later and filing for divorce in December of that year. The divorce was finalized in early 2010.
“Hiking the Appalachian Trail” wasn’t the only stunt that makes South Carolinians wonder what on earth Sanford added to his sweet tea. During a 2004 fight with the South Carolina House of Representatives, he carried two piglets he nicknamed “Pork” and “Barrel” into the House chamber lobby. It was his way of protesting the House’s override of most of his 106 vetoes on state budget items the day before. His press release called it a “lighter moment” to emphasize spending reform. Most House members thought it clownish and beneath the dignity of the office.
Sanford has attempted to reenter public service several times after his last congressional term. He lost the 2018 primary for the term, coincidentally when Trump endorsed his primary opponent Katie Arrington and commented about Argentina. In 2020, he entered the Republican presidential primary but dropped out after two months. This year he came in fourth in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District Republican primary with 12% of the vote. This happened even though he suspended his campaign in April.
Every time something wacky happens in South Carolina politics, we natives think about this statement made when the state seceded from the Union: “South Carolina is too small to be a nation and too large to be an insane asylum.” The man who uttered that, James Louis Petigru (1789-1863), was a noted attorney, defender of the Constitution, and one of the few Unionists in Charleston.
Petigru was right about the Union, but as to the part about the insane asylum? We might have to rethink that.
Editor’s Note: The Democrats are doing everything in their power to undermine the integrity of our elections.
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