CHARLESTON, S.C. --- In a new memoir, South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford writes that Gov. Mark Sanford sought her advice about his romance and how to deal with the media after she discovered his extramarital relationship with an Argentine woman.
Jenny Sanford, who managed political campaigns for her husband during their 20-year marriage, writes in Staying True that the governor used her as a sounding board, wondering aloud whether he should follow his heart to Argentina and whether he would live a life of regret if he didn't.
"Clearly those are thoughts I wish he had kept to himself," Jenny Sanford writes in the book to be released Friday.
Mark Sanford, once considered a possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, disappeared for five days last summer.
He returned to reveal at a tearful Statehouse news conference he was not hiking the Appalachian Trail, as he told his staff, but in Argentina seeing his mistress, Maria Belen Chapur.
In the book, Jenny Sanford, a Georgetown-educated, former Wall Street vice president, traces the story of the Sanfords from the time the couple met in the 1980s to the trying events of the past year. The book includes eight pages of photographs of the Sanfords' wedding and family and of Mark Sanford's political career, which included three terms in Congress and two as governor.
Jenny Sanford discovered the affair in January 2009 after finding a letter her husband had written his mistress. She writes she was "gut-punched all over again" when she found out the governor had dalliances with still other women, some of which she learned about from his interview with The Associated Press when he said he had "crossed lines" with a handful of other women.
Jenny Sanford writes that, before the AP interview, the governor called her to say "he had more explaining to do" because another woman had suggested to a media outlet she had an affair with him. Her husband told her at the time the relationship was "nothing much" and nothing she needed to know about earlier.
Jenny Sanford wrote her husband had admitted only one affair until that point and now "ever businesslike, he wanted to know what I thought he should reveal in the interview." She does not say what advice, if any, she gave.
"Here he was again asking for my advice instead of first considering how the news might make me feel," she wrote.
It's unclear from the book the identity of that woman. The AP never reported on an extramarital relationship between the governor and any woman other than Chapur.
Sanford's office had no comment Tuesday.
Jenny Sanford also reveals that after the revelation of the affair, she had her attorney draw up a contract under which she would not reveal the affair if her husband would stop seeing his mistress. The governor refused.
COLUMBIA, S.C. --- Legislators have given key approval to a measure that would prevent South Carolina governors from telling security details to leave them alone as Gov. Mark Sanford did before his rendezvous with an Argentine lover.
The Senate without debate or a recorded vote gave the legislation second reading Tuesday. Approval on Wednesday would send the bill to the House.
The legislation says the State Law Enforcement Division decides when, where and how to protect the governor and lieutenant governor.
Supporters have said that governors need to understand that security comes with the job and if they don't want it they shouldn't run for governor. Opponents have argued that ever-present security would make it difficult for governors to relax with friends, hunt or fish.
Their marriage was more about his political career than their marriage. She played a part in all this, too. Yes, he was businesslike with her- that was the problem right there. The marriage was based on that from the start.
I've always heard it takes 2 to make a marriage & it takes 2 to break one.. but words hurt,,& some of the gov. words should have stayed inside his heart..Just watching the scene played out on tv over & over is painful for others & doubly so for his family..I think we all will be glad when this isn't front page news anymore.
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