In Argentina, searching (online) for Sanford’s lover

Her name was drawing more Google searches than Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett the morning after they died. Her picture was plastered across Friday’s front pages. An eight-year-old video from her brief career as a television producer ran over and over.

But is she really the mystery lover of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford?

No source has stepped forward with evidence linking the two, but the woman -- whom the Associated Press is therefore not naming -- has become a media sensation in the United States and Argentina anyway.

“The true identity of the South Carolina governor’s lover is known,” declared the headline in Argentina’s Diario Critica. “Details emerge of the Argentine who captivated him,” said La Nacion.

The one newspaper that seems to know isn’t saying: The State, of South Carolina, said it learned the lover’s identity and Buenos Aires address from steamy e-mails it obtained in December. But the newspaper removed identifying information from the emails it printed and has not published her picture, reporting only that her first name is “Maria.”

At least five Marias live in the woman’s luxury 14-story apartment building, tantalizing reporters who have questioned everyone coming in or out. One doorman said the Maria everyone is looking for left before the Sanford scandal broke.

And so speculation has grown -- briefly centering on a woman by the same name posing before an Argentine flag on Facebook. Doormen said she’s not the one.

The closest thing to a confirmation that the woman in the building is Sanford’s lover came from the owner of Guido’s Bar, a tiny Italian restaurant down the block that also is a hangout for U.S. Embassy staff. He knows the woman, and said the governor has dined at his restaurant with a lady friend.

“They came here a little over a year ago,” said Carlos Sosto. “I waited on them myself. I took them to the back, to a more intimate place.”

Sosto said friends of the woman in question called him Friday asking him not to confirm that she and Sanford dined together last week.

Waiter Ariel Villalba said Sanford and a woman sat “very close” and talked in low voices. But with a smile, he said he couldn’t be completely sure the woman was the Maria everyone has been looking for.

“When I saw him on TV, I recognized the gentleman. It was him,” the waiter said. “About the lady, I cannot guarantee.”

The woman herself, a separated mother of two, was nowhere to be seen this week. There was no indication she was in her apartment and neighbors refused to confirm any connection to the governor.

According to Sanford’s e-mails, they met at an “open air dance spot in Punta del Este,” an Uruguayan resort, and he realized that she had “the ability to love unconditionally. The rarest of all commodities in this world of love.”

That was eight years ago, according to a rambling, tearful confession in which Sanford said he flew to Buenos Aires to break up with her after his hopes to keep a distant affair secret fell through.

Her life has been thrust into the limelight, whether she had a liaison with Sanford or not. More people were Googling early Friday for her name and “pictures” than any searches related to Jackson or Fawcett, according to Google Labs, which labeled interest in her as “volcanic.”