Serial South Carolina politician/lothario Mark Sanford has announced he is running for Nancy Mace’s open seat in South Carolina’s first district.
Eric Swalwell has retired from both the California gubernatorial race as well as Congress — may he enjoy whatever court proceedings await him, be they civil or criminal — and this is good news for everyone except the California Republican Party and me, personally. Why me? Because the gears of the Carnival of Fools are greased with the oil of corruption and vanity, and we always suffer when we lose a reliable fount of such perverted hubris. Already this electoral season has seen a brutal cull of some of my favorite freaks: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andrew Cuomo, Jasmine Crockett, and Kristi Noem have all seen their political careers end in entertainingly varied ways, like a Final Destination film. (How time flies: It seems like only last week that Jamaal Bowman was defenestrated by his angry constituents, but it’s been nearly two years.)
But now — just in time to restock supplies! — an old friend has returned, and I wish him well: Yes, serial South Carolina politician/lothario Mark Sanford has announced he is running for Nancy Mace’s open seat in South Carolina’s first district. (Mace is leaving Congress for a gubernatorial bid.) And the twist is that I would not mind at all if he won.
The Legend of Mark Sanford is at this point too complicated a yarn to tell in any detail, but even the short version fills a few paragraphs. Sanford first swept into politics as a neophyte in the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” After assembling a reputation as one of the House’s most fiscally conservative members, he was first elected as governor of South Carolina in the post-9/11 Bush midterm wave of 2002. There he quickly distinguished himself as an eloquent, thoughtful, and principled national voice for conservatism. He was assumed by all observers to be a serious contender for the 2012 GOP nomination, and mooted as an intellectual force within the party for years to come.
Then, in 2009, he decided to abandon his wife and family to “hike the Appalachian Trail” with Argentinian mistress Maria Belen Chapur. The affair — first discovered when the governor mysteriously disappeared from public view for a week, leaving only spontaneous outdoorsmanship as an excuse — destroyed Sanford’s reputation and career in an instant: He finished out his term in office and disappeared from the scene, paving the way for his protégé Nikki Haley to begin building her own brand.
And that was the end of Mark Sanford — well, at least for a little while. In 2013, after a whole four years in the penalty box, Sanford decided the time was right to return to politics: His old House seat had been vacated with the appointment of Tim Scott to the Senate, he won his primary via sheer name recognition in a 16-candidate field, and won the general election handily despite all of his baggage. (It didn’t hurt that his Democratic opponent was Stephen Colbert’s sister.)
The world was at equilibrium once again: Mark Sanford had returned right back to where he started in 1994. Alas, then Donald Trump happened. Sanford, as a politician from an earlier generation of Republican policy wonks, inevitably found himself crosswise of the president during his first term. His open skepticism of Trump in 2016 resulted in a surprisingly contested primary, and by 2018 Trump had decided to officially endorse his opponent Katie Arrington. Arrington edged Sanford out in the primary — by 1 percent — and promptly went on to lose the ultra-red district in November to one-term Democrat Joe Cunningham. (Trump certainly knows how to pick congressional winners.) So surely this was the end of Mark Sanford, was it not? Chased out of his seat by his own president, no less!
As we now see, no. (Some people were just born to serve, I guess.) What’s interesting is that Sanford sees an opening despite being ousted from his seat once already for getting on the wrong side of Donald Trump. In 2024 a man bearing Trump’s active anti-endorsement would have been treated by GOP primary voters like a man bearing the mark of Cain. Sanford is betting that in 2026, for rather obvious reasons, he will get a better hearing from the same people who only narrowly voted to turf him out before. Given the sourness of the national mood and his familiarity with local voters — who still like him, because he’s a curiously likable oddball — he might be right.
Believe it or not, I hope he is. Honestly, if you’re willing to set aside Sanford-as-adulterer — and it seems we forgive much worse these days — then there are several good things to be said about Sanford-as-politician. Congress is currently at a nadir in terms of its intellect, ambition, and desire to legislate. The legislative branch has ceded a shocking number of its core prerogatives to the executive branch over the last quarter-century: lawmaking, war-making, even the power of the purse. Sanford actually has a documented history of fighting on principle about all of these issues — it’s what cost him his job in 2018, after all — and would thus raise the overall level of seriousness in the GOP caucus just by being part of it. (He would also be a massive upgrade over the seat’s current occupant).
There is a sincerity to Sanford’s approach to politics that — despite his obvious failings — is immensely endearing. Most other representatives currently care about their cable TV news coverage. Sanford has demonstrated he has other, more practical priorities. So good luck, Mark — but I hope you prepared for your campaign by coming up with a pat explanation for the whole Olivia Nuzzi saga. Because nobody needed to know about that.
Note: An earlier version of this column misidentified how the denouement of Sanford’s tenure as governor of South Carolina played out.