Mark Sanford, the 64-year-old former South Carolina governor whose name became synonymous with political scandal, filed paperwork Monday to run for Congress in the state's 1st District, a seat he held across two separate stints spanning more than a decade. The move comes just months after his ex-fiancée's former partner publicly accused him of carrying on an affair with journalist Olivia Nuzzi.
Sanford has not responded to press inquiries about the Nuzzi allegation and does not appear to have publicly addressed it. He is instead framing his return around federal spending, telling the New York Post and the Post & Courier that the national debt is the defining issue of the era.
The district stretches along the South Carolina coastline from Hilton Head Island north past Charleston. The Cook Political Report rates it "solid" Republican, and Rep. Nancy Mace is vacating the seat to pursue the GOP nomination for governor. Sanford enters what the Post & Courier described as a crowded Republican primary carrying a $1.3 million war chest from previous campaigns.
Sanford first represented the 1st District from 1995 to 2001 before serving as governor from 2003 to 2011. His governorship imploded in 2009 when he vanished for several days. His staff told the public he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. He was actually in Argentina with a mistress.
That explanation, "hiking the Appalachian Trail", became a national punchline, as the Washington Examiner reported. Sanford had disappeared for six days. The woman, Maria Belen Chapur, had been in his life for eight years. Fellow Republicans filed ethics charges and drafted articles of impeachment. He was ultimately censured.
The fallout was real but not permanent. Sanford paid a $70,000 ethics fine, divorced his wife Jenny, and eventually became engaged to Chapur. Then he ran for his old House seat in 2013, and won. Fox News reported at the time that Sanford invoked the language of grace on the campaign trail.
He held the seat until 2019. In 2020, he mounted a long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination, dropping out before the Iowa caucuses.
Last November, Ryan Lizza, Nuzzi's ex-fiancé, publicly alleged that Sanford had an affair with the journalist. Lizza wrote in a Substack post that Nuzzi became "infatuated" with Sanford after interviewing him and sent him "risqué pictures and texts" while on the campaign trail.
Lizza claimed to have found three draft letters and said Nuzzi intended to leave one for Sanford. One incomplete handwritten letter was dated March 5, 2020. Lizza also wrote that Nuzzi told him she "only had sex one time" with Sanford, at his South Carolina home.
These are allegations from a single source, Lizza, in the context of a bitter breakup. Sanford has offered no public response. The Post reported that he did not reply to its request for comment.
Nuzzi, for her part, left New York Magazine after a separate controversy involving an alleged "sexting" relationship with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That episode, too, raised questions about professional boundaries between journalists and the powerful figures they cover.
When lawmakers face allegations involving their personal conduct, voters are left to weigh character against policy. Rep. Tony Gonzales recently exited his reelection race after admitting an affair with a former aide, a reminder that these questions carry real electoral consequences.
Sanford's public statements so far have steered hard toward fiscal policy. He told the Post & Courier:
"People have been telling me it's time to get off the bleachers."
In a longer statement, he laid out his rationale in terms that will sound familiar to anyone who followed his career in the House, where he built a reputation as a deficit hawk:
"Our nation's debt is the issue that will define whether this country survives in the form we've known it. It will also define how young and old fare over the years ahead, because inflation and interest rates, the value of the dollar, and our ability to afford all that goes with building and sustaining our lives will be driven by what happens next in confronting Washington's addiction to spending money we don't have on programs we can't afford."
The message is clear enough. Sanford wants the race to be about Washington's spending problem, not his personal life. Whether Republican primary voters in the Lowcountry will cooperate is another matter entirely.
Sanford's career arc is unusual even by the elastic standards of American politics. Most politicians who admit to an affair while in office, and get caught lying about their whereabouts for nearly a week, do not get a second act. Sanford got one. Now he wants a third.
The 2009 scandal cost him his marriage, triggered impeachment proceedings, and earned him a censure from his own party. He survived all of it and returned to Congress four years later. His $1.3 million in leftover campaign funds gives him a financial head start, and the district's solid-red rating means the real contest is the primary.
But the Nuzzi allegation is different from the 2009 affair in one important respect: Sanford has not addressed it at all. In 2009, he eventually held a tearful press conference and admitted the truth. This time, silence. That may be a legal strategy. It may be a political one. Either way, it leaves a hanging question for voters who have already extended him considerable benefit of the doubt.
Personal scandals in politics are hardly confined to one party. Divorce filings involving a California Democrat recently revealed allegations of substance abuse and neglect, a reminder that private misconduct becomes a public matter the moment someone asks voters for trust.
South Carolina's 1st District voters will decide whether Sanford's fiscal message outweighs the baggage. They did it once before, in 2013. The question now is whether a second unaddressed allegation, on top of the first admitted affair, changes the math.
Sanford's focus on the national debt is not wrong on the merits. Federal spending is a generational threat, and the House could use members willing to say so plainly. But fiscal seriousness and personal accountability are not competing values. Voters have every right to expect both.
A candidate who asks the country to confront hard truths about its spending habits might start by confronting the questions hanging over his own conduct. Silence is not a platform.
