South Carolina governor reappears, admits affair

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (Mary Ann Chastain/AP)

Another Republican politician with impeccable morals bites the dust.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Wednesday he has been unfaithful to his wife with a friend from Argentina, explaining his recent sudden disappearance.

The 49-year-old Republican governor (that is, the aides that prepared his speech) said he's sorry for letting his wife and children down and apologized to his family, staff and the state for leaving without saying a word to anyone.

And they still blast liberals for their "lack of family values"...

He said he is resigning as chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

UPDATE: Sanford's wife, SC First Lady Jenny Sanford, released a statement later Wednesday to explaining that the couple had separated and that's why he was gone and out of contact for a week.

"I deeply regret the recent actions of my husband Mark, and their potential damage to our children," she said.

"I believe wholeheartedly in the sanctity, dignity and importance of the institution of marriage. When I found out about my husband's infidelity I worked immediately to first seek reconciliation through forgiveness, and then to work diligently to repair our marriage. 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 two weeks ago," she said, noting that he was not to contact the family during the "trial separation," whose goal was to strengthen their marriage.

"Because of this separation, I did not know where he was in the past week," she added.

She then went on about marriage, enduring love, commitment, honor, forgiveness, humility, repentance, healing, reconciliation, Psalm 127, the Lord, the wisdom of Solomon, the strength and patience of Job, the grace of God...

(More than a statement about her husband's affair, it looked like a sermon about marriage, if you ask me.)

Apparently, only a miracle can save their relationship:

"I believe Mark has earned a chance to resurrect our marriage," she said.

UPDATE #2: Sanford emails to mistress emerge

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford told the woman with whom he was having an affair they were "in a hopelessly impossible situation of love" last year when he was thought to be under consideration for the Republican vice presidential nomination, according to e-mails obtained by The State newspaper.

The Columbia-based newspaper, which acquired the e-mails in December, told CNN that the governor's office had confirmed their authenticity Wednesday. When contacted by CNN, a spokesman for the governor would neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of the e-mails.

Right: Gov. Mark Sanford speaks during a news conference at the State Capitol in Columbia on Wednesday. (Getty Images)

The e-mails between the GOP governor and a Buenos Aires resident named Maria were exchanged in July of last year, according to the newspaper.

"You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty," Sanford wrote, according to the e-mails published on the newspaper's website.

"I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light--but hey, that would be going into sexual details ..."

(My eyes! My eyes!)

"How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. As I have said to you before I certainly had a special feeling about you from the first time we met, but these feelings were contained and I genuinely enjoyed our special friendship and the comparing of all too many personal notes ..."

Maria, whose full name has not yet been released, also proclaimed her devotion in a July 9 e-mail.

"You are my love...something hard to believe even for myself as it's also a kind of impossible love, not only because of distance but situation," she wrote. "Sometimes you don't choose things, they just happen...I can't redirect my feelings and I am very happy with mine towards you."

The affair began in the last year and was discovered five months ago, Sanford told reporters without elaborating. He added he and his wife were trying to work through it.

The Case of the Missing Governor

Sanford returned from an undeclared absence spent in Argentina meant to relieve the pressures of office. His staff had insisted at one point that he was off hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

"I wanted to do something exotic," Sanford said. "It's a great city."

Well... he was doing something exotic--with someone--in a great city.

He arrived at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport this morning after cutting his trip short because of the media attention regarding his disappearance.

Sanford, one of a cast of possible--now IMpossible--GOP presidential aspirants, was scheduled to hold a news conference today to explain the sudden departure that left political allies and his family making excuses that turned out to be less than accurate.

"All we've had is lies, lies, lies," South Carolina state Sen. John Knotts said in a televised news conference today. There have been "cover-ups where the governor is and where the governor is not," the Republican senator said.

"I don't have a problem with the governor taking some time off," Knotts added. "But the people in South Carolina need to know that somebody is at the helm, not just a staffer."

Perhaps "the staffer" or staffers have been running the state all along. There might be hope in new blood for the Republican Party after all!

Because of his presidential aspirations, Sanford has been one of the frequent targets of the national Democrat Party, which has trumpeted his disappearance since June 18 as an example of erratic behavior.

Did he think no one would notice he was gone? Does that mean that he was never there to begin with? This is a disaster, if you ask me.

Sanford was a visible opponent of President's Obama's economic stimulus package, at one point insisting he wouldn't accept the $700 million set aside for his state. Sanford was forced to relent after opponents won in court, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Sources: BNO, CNN, USA Today, Chicago Tribune
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