Jim Rutenberg, The Caucus blog, reports the following:
Former Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina may have not have been able to run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination after his 2009 cheating scandal, but he will at least get to talk about the campaign on national television – as a paid contributor on Fox News, the Caucus has learned.
A network spokeswoman confirmed that Mr. Sanford, once considered a potential Republican presidential contender, has signed on with the network. While he is certain to appear prominently at the debate Fox News is holding in South Carolina in January, he will appear well before that and will stay on with Fox even beyond the general election.
Mr. Sanford had been a rising star in his party before he admitted to having an affair with a lover he had met while on vacation in Argentina. He did so only after he disappeared for an assignation in Argentina without telling his staff where he went. In the process his staff created one of the great political punch lines of the year – and arguably since the Clinton scandal – by reporting that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
Mr. Sanford later said the false report was based on a tentative schedule he had left behind with his staff, to whom he apologized in a public meeting at the statehouse. He is now divorced from his wife, Jenny.
In an interview with The New York Times in August, Mr. Sanford said he spends much of his time working on the family farm and on a memoir, though he did not rule out some sort of future political run.
As for his lover, Maria Belen Chapur, he said: “I would say that I have more than well described all of my emotions and feelings toward Maria. And out of fairness to my boys and to folks that I’ve hurt, I’m not going to say more than this: any of those seemingly goofy feelings that I described a couple years back have intensified, not dissipated, with time.”
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