Hiking the Appalachian Trail
When a Governor Simply Vanished
In December 1998, Representative Bob Livingston of Louisiana made a startling confession to his fellow House Republicans. He admitted to having been unfaithful to his wife of thirty-three years. Livingston was the Speaker of the House-designate. It was expected he would assume the Speaker’s ceremonial gavel when a new Congress was convened in January 1999.
Livingston received generous support for his admission across party lines from other Congressmen. However, not everyone was so forgiving. One unsympathetic congressman was fellow Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina. “The bottom line is, Livingston lied,” Sanford told a cable news channel. “He lied to his wife.” Sanford’s comments would appear ironic – if not hypocritical – a decade later.
Fifteen years ago in mid-June 2009, it had become obvious that Governor Mark Sanford was missing. Sanford was serving his second term as South Carolina’s governor. Prior to being elected in 2002, Sanford had spent three terms in the US House of Representatives.
On Monday, June 22, 2009, it was apparent to several people that the Palmetto State governor was nowhere to be found. It was almost as if he had disappeared off the face of the earth. The lieutenant governor did not know where he was. Neither did any of his political allies — or his political opponents. First Lady Jenny Sanford indicated she had not spoken to him for several days. Even his state police security detail, which usually provided protection, did not know where he was. Calls to his cell phone went straight to voice mail.
It appeared the state’s chief executive had completely vanished.
The governor’s staff said they knew where he was, but only vaguely. The governor, a spokesman announced, was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Governor’s office spokesman, Joel Sawyer, stated the state’s chief executive was clearing his head after an exhaustive legislative session. “He’s an avid outdoorsman,” Sawyer explained. This was true. Sanford had a love of the great outdoors. He was a committed runner.
The last anyone had seen of Sanford was the previous Thursday. He climbed into a black Suburban sports-utility-vehicle belonging to his security detail and drove off without disclosing to anyone other than his immediate office where he was going or how long he would be away. “I cannot take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts,” complained Lieutenant Governor André Bauer.
The problem with the governor being cut off and completely out of touch with state officials, noted Senator Jake Knotts, was “only one man [has] authority to act in case of emergency.”
Sanford called his chief of staff the morning of Tuesday, June 23, to check in. Following the phone call, Sawyer publicly explained that Sanford was stunned to learn of the brouhaha over his disappearance and promised to return from his hiking trip the following day.
Many interested observers probably expected Sanford to drive back to Columbia, South Carolina, from some location on the Appalachian Trail. However, after a receiving a tip, an enterprising journalist intercepted the South Carolina governor in the terminal of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on June 24.
The governor admitted he was not hiking the Appalachian Trail, as his staff claimed. Sanford said he left his staff with the impression that that was his intention, but he claimed he changed his mind at the last moment and decided to do something “exotic.” That something “exotic” was a spur of the moment decision to fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to spend a few days driving along the coastal highway to clear his head.
Sanford’s lie quickly unraveled when it became obvious that driving the coastal highway near Buenos Aires was not as head clearing as one might think. Someone could literally walk Avenida Rafael Obligado Costanera in less than an hour, since it was about two miles long.
Later that same day, Sanford stood alone at a press conference and announced he had been unfaithful to his wife and was in Argentina seeing a woman with whom he had been having an affair. “I’ve been unfaithful to my wife. I’ve let down a lot of people. That’s the bottom line,” he told assembled press. His wife, Jenny, issued a statement that day that she had requested her husband move out of their Sullivan Island home after several months of marriage counseling. She had learned of the affair in January 2009.
Sanford had met María Belén Chapur during a trip to Uruguay in 2001. The pair met again during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. The two began a sexual relationship when Sanford took an official trip to Brazil in June 2008. Later in 2008, they met two more times for trysts in New York and the Hamptons.[i]
Their intimate relationship was followed by passionate emails between the two that read like they were sent by love-struck teenagers. In one email, Chapur wrote she could have “stayed [embracing] and kissing you forever.” In a later email, he wrote, “Do you really comprehend how beautiful your smile is? Have you been told lately how warm your eyes are and how they softly glow with the special nature of your soul?” Each professed their love for the other.
On June 30, Sanford indicated he was still hopeful of reconciliation with his wife. As for Chapur, “This was a whole lot more than a simple affair; this was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”[ii]
By August, Jenny Sanford had moved out of the governor’s mansion with their four sons. By the end of 2009, she had filed for divorce, which was finalized the following March. Sanford declared Chapur his soul mate, and the pair got engaged, but that engagement ended in 2014.
Articles of impeachment were considered by the South Carolina Legislature, but the legislative body ultimately decided to censure Sanford. He finished out his term as governor in January 2011.
There is no word if former Representative Bob Livingston commented on Sanford’s affair.
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, Post, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).
[i] “Governor Says He ‘Crossed Lines’ with Women,” Brownsville Herald,
June 30, 2009.
[ii] Ibid.