Mark Sanford at yesterday's press conference. (Getty)
Although South Carolina Gov.
Mark Sanford promised Wednesday to redouble his focus on state issues after admitting to an extramarital affair, three-fifths of his constituents apparently wish he would just go away.
Sixty percent of South Carolina respondents to a Survey USA poll conducted Wednesday said Sanford should resign his office in the wake of his disclosure of his relationship with a woman in Argentina. Just more than a third -- 34 percent -- said he shouldn't resign.
The poll was conducted in conjunction with television station WCSC in Charleston.
Most of the respondents also expressed anger over the two-term Republican governor's week-long disappearance that preceded his confessional news conference. Sanford did not notify the public of his absence or his staff of his whereabouts. This prompted his staff to tell reporters he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, when he was, in fact, in Argentina.
The vast majority of respondents said Sanford -- who cannot seek re-election in 2010 under South Carolina's term-limit law -- was politically damaged by the scandal. Opinion was split, though, on whether the revelation of his affair would be a career-ender for Sanford: 37 percent believed it would end his role in public life, while 45 percent said it would hurt his career, but not end it. Just 15 percent of respondents thought the news would have no long-term effect on Sanford's career.
While Sanford almost immediately stepped down as chairman of the Republican Governor's Association, public officials in South Carolina for now have held off calling for his resignation as governor, observing his request for time to sort things out with his wife and family.
Until Wednesday, a number of political observers and conservative activists had viewed Sanford as having potential as a national political figure, and he was touted as a prospect for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
He has voiced conservative views on social issues, but is best known as a fiscal hawk who initially declared South Carolina would reject hundreds of millions of dollars from the economic stimulus measure pushed into law by President Obama, because Sanford believed it involved too big an intrusion on the state by the federal government.
But Sanford's stance was reversed by the Republican-controlled state legislature, with which the governor has had previously run-ins over spending -- including an incident in 2004 in which he went to the state Capitol to make a point about pork-barrel spending while carrying two pigs, which in turn soiled the rugs and floors.
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Comments
Democrats will want Sanford to stay in office. He can no longer be effective, will be distracted from the duties of his office and will serve as a continual reminder the GOP would rather forget.
If he stepped down now, his successor would also be a Republican but without the baggage and would be an incumbent in the next election. From the Democratic perspective, why mess with it? It's the GOP that wants him out now.
Posted by: billp
| June 25, 2009 2:34 PM
This will be forgotten about by the time the 2010 elections come around. Besides, it seems like the legislature was calling the shots anyway. No damage to SC GOP, purely a Sanford thing. Sorry billp.
Posted by: NObama
| June 25, 2009 5:13 PM
Perhaps now Republicans will think twice before claiming to be more righteous than non-Republicans. Gov. Sanford will be just one of many in a long line of Republicans who failed to live up to one or more of the Commandments they insist on quoting and displaying in public. And how is this supposed to bolster the argument that the Republican Party is the defender of traditional marriage?
Posted by: mag_amberson
| June 25, 2009 10:36 PM
I really have to state a strenuous disagreement with Bill P's assessment.
While Bill may be the type of guy who seeks a political angle in everything, it is unfair of him to attribute such a weak mentality to others and to generalize about Democrats.
In both New Jersey and New York, strong Democratic states, popular Democratic Governors were forced to resign by political means after unacceptable sexual peccadillos were exposed.
The Democrats of the Palmetto State may well be more incensed over Governor Sanford's peccadillo than the Republicans since the Governor has made a career of setting himself in judgement over the moral inadequacies of Democrats.
The rest of the country is watching SC to see whether or not family values are a political slogan or a matter of principle among the leaders and rank and file of the GOP.
Posted by: Robert Chapman
| June 26, 2009 4:20 PM
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