In an interview with The Associated Press, Sanford admitted to as many as seven meetings with Maria Belen Chapur since 2001, including five during the year Sanford has said he was engaged in a romantic relationship with her. Further, the two-term Republican governor said he had casual encounters with other women, but that he did not have sex with them. Those encounters happened, he said, outside the United States but before he met Chapur… Sanford’s wife, Jenny, discovered the affair in January when she discovered a letter he had written her. Sanford told the AP he asked his wife to visit Chapur with him several times, but she refused. In the interview, Sanford called Chapur his ‘soul mate,’ but said he is trying to fall back in love with his wife…
On Monday, Sanford issued an apology letter to supporters in which he asked for their forgiveness and said he had considered, then rejected, thoughts of resigning. "Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign — as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword," Sanford wrote to supporters. "While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride."
Sanford, who has often clashed with fellow Republicans in the Palmetto State Legislature, said instead he thought the 2010 legislative session — his last as governor — could turn a page. His friends said their "belief was that if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one — and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm," Sanford wrote.
SC gov gambles to ‘lay it all out’ about affair
The State
By TAMARA LUSH and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE
June 30, 2009… Among the additional visits with Chapur that Sanford detailed was an encounter that he described as a failed attempt at a farewell meeting in New York this past winter, chaperoned by a spiritual adviser and sanctioned by his wife soon after she found out about the affair.
Sanford said he saw Chapur five times over the past year, including two romantic, multi-night stays with her in New York – one in Manhattan, one in the Hamptons, both paid for in cash so no one would know – before they met in the city again with the intention of breaking up.
Four months later, he got on a plane to Argentina for another rendezvous with Chapur when he made an important discovery. "I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soul mate," he said…
[…] I said, embarassing… Later: Three weeks ago, he sounded suicidal to me [I’m not kidding…]. Since then, he’s been off my radar, and I haven’t given it much thought. But, to be […]