After his recent runoff win, Mark Sanford may be manning the deck of his political campaign, but it seems he has no crew onboard. And no gas in the tank, either.
No one of foundation is standing behind him or publicly supporting him, and he has no positive record to project to voters, either.
For example, the only endorsements Sanford’s received from persons who’ve worked with him in government are:
- Tom Davis, who was Sanford’s chief of staff before being elected to his current role of state senator,
- Edie Rodgers, who only had one year of her term as state representative overlap with Sanford’s as governor before she retired,
- Barbara Nielsen, who was an advisor to Sanford after she ended her term as Supt. of Education (which she served before Sanford took the governor’s office), and
- Scott Richardson, a state senator from 2000 to 2007 until Sanford appointed him to be state insurance commissioner for $130,000 a year.
Thus, no one who ever worked with (instead of for) Sanford has offered an endorsement.
National media have taken note of these no-shows, too. Politico reported “Not a single member of the South Carolina congressional delegation has endorsed Sanford, an indication of his weak standing among his would-be Washington colleagues.”
The reason he’s not getting support could be that Sanford’s never done anything to earn it.
When he last served in Congress, not one of the 44 bills he sponsored ever made it out of committee, for example.
That’s a good thing, though, because 10 of Sanford’s bills were attacks on Social Security. He wanted to let Wall Street handle those funds, where they’d immediately be subject to fees for brokers to collect, and where they’d have no insurance or guarantee. If Social Security had been handed over to private companies, imagine where seniors who retired in 2007 would have been – practically broke, due to the stock market crash that began that year.
Sanford also accomplished nothing as governor. For example, instead of working with the State Assembly, he only tried to work against it, vetoing 106 budget bills in 2004 alone.
That might explain why Sanford is shy of endorsements, though; the Republican-led assembly overruled 105 of those 106 vetoes in less than 90 minutes that year. They also overruled hundreds of his other vetoes throughout his term as governor. (See "Gone" video in left column.)
Releasing live pigs on the floor of the state House in ‘04 didn’t help Sanford’s reputation with his own party, either. Like Republican state Rep. Gary Simrill once told media, “(I)n politics, you cultivate friends and create enemies. Sanford has done more creating than cultivating.”
There were quite a few enemies Sanford cultivated in his own party, too. It was Republicans in the State Legislature who tried to impeach him, and 61 GOP from the state House alone called for his resignation. They successfully voted to censure him. Even now- Sen. Tim Scott sent Sanford a letter telling him to resign.
Add in the $750 million shortage in school funding due to the budgets he passed, the continuously rising rate of unemployment under his term as governor, hiscuts that lead to even more lost jobs, and his attempt to refuse our own federal tax dollars for use in South Carolina (which took the state Supreme Court to correct), and it might seem like it can’t get any worse.
But it does. Sanford’s record is chock full of hypocrisy, as his current campaign itself verifies.
Sanford pledged to never serve more than three terms in Congress, and he upheld that promise when he left in 2000 (after six stale and non-productive years). But now he’s running for a fourth term?
While in Congress, he voted to impeach Bill Clinton following the Lewinsky scandal, calling the circumstance “reprehensible.” He also publicly chastised Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), whose extramarital affair was revealed about the same time as Clinton’s, and called for his resignation, saying “The bottom line … is he still lied.”
But Sanford only went on to have his own extramarital affair. And lied about it. And then got forced to pay us back for his use of our tax dollars for that fling.
By his public pledge for limited terms, combined with the precedents he himself set in the Clinton and Livingston situations, how he can possibly seek office now? This makes Sanford a hypocrite.
He has no support from elected officials in his own party. He’s flip-flopped on his own standards, both political and moral.
But he still has the audacity to ask for our vote?
Sorry, Sanford, but your ship’s about to go under on May 7.
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