Mark Sanford

Mark Sanford
File:GovernorSanford- OfficialPortrait.jpg
115th Governor of South Carolina
Incumbent
Assumed office January 15, 2003
Lieutenant	André Bauer
Preceded by	James Hovis Hodges
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina's 1st district
In office January 3, 1995 – January 3, 2001
Preceded by	Arthur Ravenel, Jr.
Succeeded by	Henry E. Brown, Jr.
Personal details
Born	(1960-05-28) May 28, 1960 Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Jenny Sanford
Children	Marshall Sanford Landon Sanford Bolton Sanford Blake Sanford
Residence	Sullivan's Island, South Carolina
Alma mater	Furman University University of Virginia
Profession	Real Estate Executive

Marshall Clement "Mark" Sanford, Jr. (born May 28, 1960) is an American Republican politician who has been Governor of South Carolina since 2003.

Early life

Before his senior year of high school, Sanford moved with his family to a 3,000-acre (12 km²) Coosaw Plantation near Beaufort, South Carolina from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where he grew up. Sanford attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. He received a bachelor's degree from Furman University and an MBA from Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. Sanford moved to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina in the early 1990s with his wife Jenny and their four boys, Marshall, Landon, Bolton, and Blake.

Congress

In 1994, Sanford entered the Republican primary for the Charleston-based 1st Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. The seat had come open after four-term incumbent Arthur Ravenel gave it up to make an unsuccessful run for governor. Despite having never run for office before, he finished second in a crowded primary behind Van Hipp, Jr, a former George H. W. Bush Administration official. Sanford defeated Hipp in the runoff, and breezed to victory in November. He was reelected twice, both times facing only minor-party opposition.

While in Congress, Sanford was a staunch conservative (he garnered a lifetime rating of 92 from the American Conservative Union), but displayed an occasional independent streak. He often would be one of two members of Congress, along with Ron Paul, voting against bills that otherwise got unanimous support. For example, he voted against a bill that preserved sites linked to the Underground Railroad. He opposed pork barrel projects even when they benefited his own district; in 1997 he voted against a defense appropriations bill that included funds for Charleston's harbor. Seeing himself as a "citizen-legislator," he did not run for reelection in 2000, in keeping with a promise to serve only three terms in the House.

Sanford was listed in the House roll as "R-Charleston," even though he lived on Sullivan's Island.

Governor of South Carolina

First term

He entered the gubernatorial election of 2002; he first defeated Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler in the Republican primary and then defeated the Democratic incumbent, Jim Hodges, in the general election, by a margin of 53% to 47% to become the 115th Governor of South Carolina. In accordance with South Carolina law, Sanford was elected separately from the state's Republican lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer.

Sanford has sometimes had a contentious relationship with the South Carolina General Assembly, even though it is controlled by his party. The Republican-led SC House of Representatives overrode 105 of Sanford's 106 budget vetoes on May 26, 2004. The following day, Sanford brought live pigs into the House chamber as a visual protest against "pork projects".

Sanford rejected the Assembly's entire budget on June 13 2006. Had this veto stood, the state government would have shut down on July 1. The governor explained his veto as being the only way to get the cuts he desired, and that using the line item veto would have been inadequate as well as impossible. However, in a special session the following day, both houses dismissed Sanford's call for reform by overriding his veto– effectively restoring their original budget (which indeed contained many reforms Sanford had previously called for).

Sanford professes to be a firm supporter of limited government, and many pundits have described his views as being libertarian in nature. Most recently, he has embarked on an ambitious plan to reform methods of funding the state's public education system. This would include measures such as school vouchers– aimed at introducing more competition into the school system as a means of fostering improvement. This would also allow more choice for parents who wish for their children to be educated in a religious or independent setting easier access at doing so. The plan, known as "Put Parents In Charge," would provide around $2,500 per child to parents who chose to withdraw their children from the state's public school system and instead send them to religious and other independent schools. Sanford has framed this plan as a necessary market based reform.

Sanford has also sought to reform the state's public college system. Sanford has criticized these schools as focusing too much on separately creating research institutions and not on educating the young adults of South Carolina. Sanford has suggested that they combine some programs as a means of curbing tuition increases. The schools did not respond positively to this suggestion, however, causing Sanford to remark that "if any institution ultimately feels uncomfortable with our push toward coordination, they can exit the system and go private."

Sanford's tenure has not been free of controversy. He was criticized for missing a budget debate and was harshly criticized in a Greenville News article for delays in signing a piece of domestic violence legislation. A Time Magazine article critical of Sanford, cited that some "fear his thrift has brought the state's economy to a standstill."

Sanford's approval rating ranges from 47% to 55% over the past year according to Survey USA.

Reelection and second term

His campaign for reelection in 2006 began by Sanford winning the June 13th Republican Primary over Oscar Lovelace, a family physician from Prosperity, with 65% of the vote to Lovelace's 35%. His Democratic competitor in the November elections was state senator Tommy Moore, who won the Democratic primary. Sanford won re-election, beating Democrat Tommy Moore by 55%-45%.

On election day, Sanford was not allowed to vote in his home precinct because he did not have his voter registration card. The governor was obliged to go to a voter registration office to get a new registration card. "I hope everybody else out there is as determined to vote as I was today," he said. Sanford's driver's license had a Columbia address, but Sanford was trying to vote at his home precinct in Sullivan's Island. According to NBC, Sanford declared that it would be his last campaign.

In dissent with the Republican Party of South Carolina, Sanford, an Episcopalian, opposes the faith-based license plates his state offers, marketed largely to the state's conservative evangelical citizens. After allowing the law to pass without his signature, he wrote, "It is my personal view that the largest proclamation of one's faith ought to be in how one lives his life."

After the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which Governor Sanford strongly opposed and publicly criticized before and after its passage by Congress and presidential signing, Sanford initially indicated he might not accept all of the funds allotted by the spending law to South Carolina. He was criticized by many Democrats and some moderate Republicans both in his state and outside who noted South Carolina's 9.5% unemployment rate (one of the highest in the country) and complained that Sanford wasn't doing enough to improve economic conditions in his state, which they felt could be alleviated by the stimulus money. James Clyburn, who represents South Carolina's 6th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives, alleged that several Southern governors' consideration of refusing the money was inherently racist due to the lack of economic parity in South Carolina, where the vast majority of unemployed and impoverished individuals are African American, though he said "it had little to do with Sanford" particularly. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, suggested that if Sanford or other governors rejected their portion of stimulus funds, he would be "happy" to take them instead.

On March 11th, 2009, Mark Sanford became the first United States Governor to formally reject a portion of the federal stimulus money earmarked by Congress for the state of South Carolina.

Role in 2008 presidential election

In 2006, before the midterm elections, some people were discussing the possibility of Sanford running for president. He said that he would not run, and claimed that his re-election bid would be his last election, win or lose. After Super Tuesday in 2008, Governor Sanford received some mention as a potential running mate for the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, John McCain.

Sanford publicly aligned himself with McCain in a March 15, 2008, piece in the Wall Street Journal. Likening the presidential race to a football game at halftime, Sanford noted that he "sat out the first half, not endorsing a candidate...But I'm now stepping onto the field and going to work to help John McCain. It's important that conservatives do the same."

On January 11, 2008, shortly before the South Carolina presidential primaries (R Jan 19, D Jan 26), Governor Sanford published a guest column in the Columbia newspaper The State. In the article, "Obama's Symbolism Here", Sanford wrote, "I won't be voting for Barack Obama for president," but noted the "historical burden" borne by South Carolinians on the topic of race. He advised voters in South Carolina to take note of the symbolism of Obama's early success, with the knowledge that South Carolina was a segregated state less than fifty years earlier, and discouraged voting either for or against Obama on the basis of his race.

In a January 18, 2008 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Sanford discussed his Obama article. Wolf Blitzer asked, "Give us your mind-set. Why did you think it was so important to write this piece right now at this critical moment?" Governor Sanford responded, "Well, it plays into a larger conversation that we're having as a family of South Carolinians on, in fact, the [constitutional] structure of our government." Also, Wolf Blitzer showed Sanford clips of recent comments made by John McCain and Mike Huckabee about the Confederate flag and asked the Governor, "All right, two different positions, obviously. Who's right in this?" Sanford responded, "Well, it depends who you talk to." Sanford elaborated that "if you were to talk to the vast majority of South Carolinians, they would say that we do not need to be debating where the Confederate flag is or is not."

Sanford attracted derision in the liberal blogosphere and among pundits and analysts on the left for a gaffe during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on July 13, 2008, when he had difficulty answering a question about differences between Senator McCain and incumbent President George W. Bush on economic policy. "I'm drawing a blank, and I hate when I do that, especially on television," joked Sanford.

Possible 2012 candidacy

As early as January 2008, there has been anticipation that Mark Sanford would run for President in 2012, and online support groups have sprung up voluntarily on virtual social networks like Facebook in support of a Sanford ticket.

Further boosting Sanford's profile in advance of a potential candidacy, which the governor has neither ruled out nor expressly hinted at, he was elected as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association in November 2008 and was cited by Michael S. Steele, the Chairman of the Republican Party as one of four "rising stars" in the GOP (alongside Governors, Sarah Palin of Alaska, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota) in February 2009.

On February 22, 2009, Governor Sanford declined to rule out a possible presidential bid in 2012, though he professed to have no current plans to run for national office.

Electoral history

South Carolina's 1st congressional district: Results 1994–1998

Year		Democrat	Votes	Pct		Republican	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct
1994		Robert Barber	47,769	32%		Mark Sanford	97,803	66%		Robert Payne	Libertarian	1,836	1%	*
1996		(no candidate)				Mark Sanford	138,467	96%		Joseph F. Innella	Natural Law	5,105	4%
1998		(no candidate)				Mark Sanford	118,414	91%		Joseph F. Innella	Natural Law	11,586	9%	*

*Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1994, write-ins received 63 votes. In 1998, write-ins received 71 votes.

South Carolina Gubernatorial Election 2002

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Republican	Mark Sanford	583,339	52.9
	Democratic	James Hodges (Incumbent)	518,310	47.3

South Carolina Gubernatorial Election 2006

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Republican	Mark Sanford (Incumbent)	601,868	55.1	+2.2
	Democratic	Tommy Moore	489,076	44.8

External links

• Mark Sanford for President 2012
• South Carolina Office of the Governor Mark Sanford official state website
  • biography

• Follow the Money - Mark Sanford
  • 2008 2006 2004 2002 campaign contributions
• 10 Things You Didn't Know About Mark Sanford

U.S. Representative (1994–2006)

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Statements
  • Open Session On The Western Hemisphere Today: A Roundtable Discussion, Hearing Before The Subcommittee On The Western Hemisphere Of The Committee On International Relations, House Of Representatives, One Hundred Fifth Congress, First Session, March 12, 1997
  • The Caribbean: An Overview Hearing Before The Subcommittee On The Western Hemisphere Of The Committee On International Relations House Of Representatives One Hundred Fifth Congress First Session May 14, 1997
  • The President's Foreign Assistance Budget Request For Fiscal Year 1999 Hearing Before The Committee On International Relations House Of Representatives One Hundred Fifth Congress Second Session March 5, 1998
  • Latin America And The Caribbean: An Update And Summary Of The Summit Of The Americas Hearing Before The Subcommittee On The Western Hemisphere Of The Committee On International Relations House Of Representatives One Hundred Fifth Congress Second Session May 6, 1998
  • Franchise Fee Calculations Of Fort Sumter Tours, Inc. Oversight Hearing Before The Subcommittee On National Parks And Public Lands Of The Committee On Resources House Of Representatives One Hundred Sixth Congress First Session July 1, 1999, Washington, Dc Serial No. 106–44
  • Reform of the IMF and the World Bank: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States, 106th Congress, Second Session, April 12, 2000 Sanford's remarks begin on page 32. 1.1 MB PDF
  • The Center For National Policy: Issues in U.S.-Cuba Policy, Washington D.C., November 2000 Sanford speaks in favor of lifting U.S. embargo of Cuba. 314 KB PDF

{{subst:#if:Sanford, Mark|}} [[Category:{{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1960}}

|| UNKNOWN | MISSING = Year of birth missing {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:LIVING}}||LIVING=(living people)}}
| #default = 1960 births

}}]] {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:LIVING}}

|| LIVING  = 
| MISSING  = 
| UNKNOWN  = 
| #default = 

}}