Gov. Sanford to repay South Carolina for Argentina trip

A day after Gov. Mark Sanford tearfully confessed to an affair, he stayed out of sight Thursday -- raising his head only to issue a statement that he’d repay South Carolina for the cost of one of his visits to see his Argentine lover.

In the statement, Sanford said that he was “proud” of the trip, made partly to drum up business for the state, but that he “made a mistake” -- meeting with his lover, whom Argentine media have identified as Maria Belen Chapur, 43, who lives in the trendy Palermo district of Buenos Aires.

“That has raised some very legitimate concerns and questions, and as such I am going to reimburse the state for the full cost of the Argentina leg of this trip,” the Republican governor said.

Otherwise, Sanford spent the day with his wife and family, aides said.

But as a former congressman who voted to impeach President Clinton in 1998, he would be familiar with the kinds of questions buzzing around this sweltering capital:

To what extent should Sanford be held accountable for his deceptions that briefly covered up his extramarital affair? Should he resign from office? Or be impeached?

And if he finishes the remaining year-plus of his term -- which he intends to do, according to a spokesman -- how could he get anything done with this hanging over him?

As with the Clinton affair, no consensus has formed here among lawmakers or their exasperated constituents.

Some liberal voters, such as bar owner Phill Blair, 28, said they hoped Sanford would step down. Blair was angry that the governor had refused to accept a portion of President Obama’s stimulus package earlier this year. (Sanford was forced to take it after a legal battle.) Now, Blair said, South Carolina was in the spotlight again -- for a sex scandal. “He’s pretty much embarrassed us twice in the last year,” Blair said.

But a number of others, including some who disagreed with Sanford’s conservative philosophy, maintained that his secret Argentine rendezvous -- which left the state and nation wondering for days where he was -- should be considered a personal matter.

“People have done way worse things than he’s done, and have just gotten a slap on the hand,” said liberal-leaning legal clerk Billie Green, 49.

Some of the figures expected to drive the coming scrutiny of the governor here, and some of the potential themes of their inquiry, were beginning to emerge. State Sen. John M. “Jake” Knotts Jr., a fellow Republican but a longtime foe of Sanford’s, was one of the few legislators busy Thursday in the Capitol building.

The Legislature will not be back in session until January, but Knotts had called a closed-door meeting of close friends to discuss L’Affaire Sanford. Beforehand, he showed a stack of printed e-mails from voters that called for the governor to step aside or face impeachment. “They’re burning me up about how this guy should resign,” Knotts said. “They’re telling me this guy has completely lost their confidence.”

Knotts, a former policeman with a big belly and bigger voice, hails from Lexington County, an increasingly suburban swath of rural South Carolina. He didn’t say he wanted Sanford to step down, but he did level a number of blunt criticisms. Sitting behind a huge Confederate battle flag -- a symbol whose presence at the state Capitol triggered an ongoing boycott by the NAACP -- Knotts said he worried about Sanford’s ability to attract new business to the state, given the new national notoriety.

“Is this the man to convince a large industry to come to South Carolina?” he asked.

Knotts said he had serious problems with the way Sanford reportedly disappeared without contacting other government officials. And he said he wanted to determine whether Sanford had used any government funds in his amorous voyages overseas. “We need to determine if any criminal acts of fraud or anything like that occurred on these trips to Argentina,” Knotts said.

Sanford has said he has made three trips to see his lover, who is divorced. The governor paid for the most recent trip with his own funds, spokesman Joel Sawyer said. He said he knew very little about the trip before that one.

But the first trip, Sawyer said, was a June 2008 trade mission to Brazil and Argentina, paid for with state tax dollars. On Thursday, in response to queries from The Times and other news outlets, the state Commerce Department released details of that weeklong trip, including the $9,000-plus bill paid by state taxpayers.

Commerce officials said that after visiting Brazil, Sanford and a department employee peeled away for a visit to Buenos Aires, reportedly for some “official state meetings.”

Sanford volunteered to repay the state for the Argentine leg of the first trip. The larger trade mission produced an agreement with Brazilian company Fitesa to build a $120-million fabric plant in Laurens County, S.C., the governor’s spokesman said.

Marvin Moss, head of the county development corporation, said in an interview that the project had been delayed by financing problems.

If more evidence surfaces that Sanford used state money for his romantic liaisons, it would be particularly damaging, given his sometimes unyielding demands that government not spend wastefully.

The South Carolina Constitution says that public officeholders may be impeached for “serious crimes” or “serious misconduct” -- nebulous concepts that have rarely been tested, said James Underwood, an emeritus law professor at the University of South Carolina. Impeachment would require a two-thirds vote of the House and, after a trial, a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

Blair, the liberal bar owner, is no fan of Sanford, but he doesn’t like the idea of a drawn-out drama either. He’s already worried that the scandal has distracted South Carolina from dealing with its budget crisis, its struggling schools, and one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.

“Impeachment?” he said. “How much more wasted effort is that going to take?”

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richard.fausset@latimes.com