The Backstory of Sanford & Sonnets Is Dribbling Out
I was carping, in this post and comments thereto, about what a fascinating backstory must be behind the Sanford hothouse tale. Ask, and ye shall receive. The State from Columbia SC (h/t esseff44) has a new article up:
A Dec. 30 e-mail planted the seeds of believability for a Tuesday-night phone caller who said Sanford had flown to Argentina.Those anonymous tips led The State to have a reporter at the Atlanta airport to interview Sanford. Then, in rapid succession, the paper told Sanford’s aides and a key ally, Davis, that it had e-mails describing an affair between Sanford and a woman in Argentina, and a free-lance journalist knocked on a door in Buenos Aires. A woman at that address initially answered to the name on the e-mails, Maria, then said Maria wasn’t at home.But the damage was done.In eight short hours, the combination of the two anonymous tipsters and three actions — Sanford’s arrival at the Atlanta airport, unveiling the e-mails and finding Maria — took Sanford from would-be president to disgraced adulterer.
and
Sanford’s long, strange absence — and Jenny Sanford’s chilly public statements about the governor’s whereabouts — had suddenly cast in new light copies of five e-mails purportedly between Sanford and a woman in Argentina.
The e-mail exchanges, pasted into a single e-mail, had arrived Dec. 30 at The State in an account for letters to the editor. The subject field read, “This is your governor.”
The e-mails were from the personal e-mail address of Gov. Sanford to a woman in Argentina named Maria.
Those e-mails outlined a sexual affair.The editorial page editor who retrieved the e-mail replied to it, asking who the e-mailer was. There was no response.
When the e-mails were sent to the newsroom, a reporter and editor there both e-mailed the AOL account in the United Kingdom, asking questions. There was no response. Then, the reporter e-mailed Maria. Again, there was no response.
Attempts to electronically divine whether the e-mails were genuine also failed to produce results.
With the S.C. Legislature in session and a battle over federal stimulus money escalating, the e-mails went in a drawer.Then, Knotts announced Sanford was missing.
Please go read the article, it has a plethora of new information and discussion, and is by a full team from The State Newspaper, which is a McClatchy property. You have to hand it to McClatchy, once again they are killing the giants in the newspaper business.
Wow, the editor and team cut Sanford slack by allowing former COS Davis time to get Sanford’s inept, bumbling team straightened out.
Wow.
Still, per our previous discussion, would like a better bill of particulars on the time period between when they received the emails and Lovegate.
Yeah, I think there is some as-yet unresolved content with the “angry cub” who ratted out the cougar.
Why an AOL account in the UK as a forwarding email account, for example?
Sure hope that freelancer they hired in Argentina is still working on this.
Also wonder why multiple women’s names were showing up, and how…did Sanford have enough enemies out there too willing to muddy up the waters? Or were there simply a lot of “Marias” flooding in from Argentina – there were three in the same apartment building, I thought I’d read in one outlet. Maria Belen Chapur also was referred to as “Belen” professionally; did that name get confused?
More questions, few answers.
Not the least of which is why both Jenny and Davis bailed out on such a needy incumbent, leaving him to be handled by such clueless children, instead of trying to make sure Sanford was set up for another run for office, say for Senate?
Oh, yeah, agreed. The AOL in London was interesting. There are a lotta long knives in this one; and they are apparently coming out of the woodwork.
From the article:
Any ambitious reporters digging for the names of the other women besides Maria?
That’s where I am at.
Katrina Shealy is one name I think “bears watching.”
Crikey, this is freaking hilarious.
OMG, that’s so sad and true, a mirror of humanity — the perfect tragicomedy!
To say that I understand not one single thing in that linky would be a vast understatement. Not to mention that I’m at a total loss for choice of emoticon to go with that first comment.
Spoof!
Oh, geez! Color me gullible.
ROFL … hilarious !
OT- Hey Petro- I’d like to figure out a way to email you about some yoga stuff. Is there a way other than facebook?
Hiya VG, my emailaddy is *c*4*2*c*h @ *h*o*t*m*a*i*l*d*o*t*c*o*m.
The mods can also give you my e-mail, esp if it’s TLM or RBG … I think they are more familiar with me than they’d care to be … *g*
Most interesting, and thnx, bmaz. Idly wondering why GWTW and not Peyton Place.
Jeff Sharlet has a blog piece up on Sanford.
http://killingthebuddha.com/kt…..e-of-satan
Maria sounds like a honeypot for Argentine Intel, imho.
The three things I wondered about in an earlier post are still not completely answered.
1. Who mailed the e-mails to The State? Maybe it was just a jealous boyfriend? Maybe not?
2. There was a report in a Greenville TV station report about there being state of South Carolina vehicle parked at the Atlanta airport. If there was one there also – why? Sanford must have flown back to Columbia due to time constraints? Someone must have seen him in the airport even though local media were apparently not tipped off.
http://www.wyff4.com/news/19843518/detail.html
3. Lindsey Graham did talk about his own (Lindsey’s) ’secret sins’ after the Ensign saga became public but before Sanford travels became public. I wonder whether Lindsey had been tipped off. I believe Lindsey was also on MTP today talking about sins but I did not see it.
My fourth issue is now – what about the 3 women that were mentioned in The State newpaper today. I fear the Governor may have been cultivating more that one dear friendship. Of course, Maria was no rookie/nookie either.
Re: point 2 — I think I have read (wish I could remember the source) that it was a tipster in comments at a website which said there was a SLED vehicle at the ATL airport, and that the tipster’s IP addy sourced back to ATL Comcast broadband ISP. Looked less like a credible tip because of that info.
Re: point 3 – Anything Graham says must be viewed from the perspective that his seat could have been primaried by Sanford given the right circumstances. Lindsey must have spent a lot of time this past couple of years looking over his shoulder…
FWIW, I’ve felt the story of the car at the Columbia Airport was someone from Sanford’s office trying to lay out a smoke screen. Easy enough for someone to plant a car locally to muddy the water about Sanford flying out of Atlanta.
The State vehicle he took off in alone was found at the Columbia airport. Cell phone later that day showed him near Atlanta airport. I think he flew from Columbia to Atlanta to make a connection to Buenos Aires. I don’t think he had a car at the Atlanta airport. After his surprise meeting with the reporter, he probably made a connecting flight back to Columbia where his vehicle had been parked all week. After he had been reported missing, there would have been an all out look out for that vehicle.
Questions: Maria must have gotten an e-mail from The State editor looking for conformation back in December/January. She must have realized what it was all about. Did she tell the Governor? If not, why not? He seemed oblivious. Why didn’t they try did get a response from the Governor’s e-mail address as well as the other two (the sender’s and Maria’s)? Why didn’t they ask the Governor instead of putting them in a drawer for six months? We know who tipped them he was AWOL. We don’t know who tipped them he was on a plane from Atlanta to Argentina the day he went missing.
Sunday morning talking heads all seemed to agree that his goose was cooked as far as 2012 presidental aspirations. They also seemed to agree he was unlikely to resign since the LT. Governor is so disliked by both parties and contenders don’t want to give him a head start as incumbent for 18 months. George S. got a big chuckle out of the King David comparison.
Before tipping the governor off to whether they had the emails, they wanted to poke around to see if they were legit. If I were an editor, I’d have done the same thing. If they were a spoof, you look like a fool for taking them seriously — and you risk ticking off very important people in the meantime. All in all, trying to nail down whether they were legit or not is a very legitimate reason for not releasing them or even going to the governor with them.
Putting them in the drawer is not the same as tossing them in the trash. It’s saying “There might be something here, but we don’t have enough to go on yet.”
Here’s the editor explaining just that.
He goes on to explain the decision to publish the e-mails.
http://www.thestate.com/editor…..44323.html
I don’t understand what he means by “roil the situation.”
He means if the competition got wind of the existence of the emails BEFORE The State could confirm their veracity, they would have had a lot of pressure to publish without any corroboration or risk losing the story.
This happens all the time in the news business. IIRC, both the NYT and Washington Post had the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and wrestled with whether to publish or not. While the Post was consulting their legal folks, the Times went ahead and published excerpts, which immediately landed them in federal court. They won the case once it reached SCOTUS.
Any publisher worth his or her salt wants to know that the big, juicy story they think they have will stand up to scrutiny once it is published. They also want to have the story to themselves and not get beaten by the competition. Sometimes they have to choose between being sure and being first, but that’s why they get the big bucks.
I get that, and that is perfectly understandable. But I would still like to know what they did to follow up other than throwing them in a drawer and the ineffectual steps they have described to date.
They also had an associate in Argentina look up Maria.
Let’s see if The State is going to check out the names of those other women that they were given or are they going to put them in a drawer for six months.
Since it is now in the public, I would think that there would be pressure to investigate more. But then again, segregationist Strom Thrumond fathered a child with his black underage maid and the public did not know about until more than 50 years later – after his death.
from the linked article:
~~They mentioned Coosaw, the Sanford plantation, and Sanford’s love of digging holes;~~
Talk about a full circle.
Visiting my mom in Columbia.
Starting my paper route “The State Paper” when I was 12 years old.
(That is when I learned to read newspapers, though a dying art now.)
Suddenly The State Paper is relevant again!
And something so typical of life and especially of Politicians whom my parents always idolized takes the spotlight.
There is no doubt in this (still) Southerner’s mind that Gov Sanford has had many dalliances over the years. The signs are there over and over. Great personal charm, avoidance of accountability (a penchant for privacy is the usual excuse), always finding people that are “useful,” etc., etc.
Finally he reached the extreme of the “arc” he was transcribing and he lost his center, his balance, his anchor to reality, and he fell away into the darkness of the abyss.
In Yeats’ words:
“The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
My mom is riveted to the “passion” of the play. It is really helping her health.
From an editorial in today’s Charlotte Observer:
http://www.charlotteobserver.c…..04485.html
h/t ChristianDeminNC @ Kos
Snark score for editorial writer = 10
you know what?
if we want to re-invigorate a real 4th estate then progresives should all take subscriptions to mcclatchy
we need to let the big ones know, you get bought you lose constituents, you stay independant and on it you gain constituents
Excellent idea….I’m gonna head over their way and see what’s available by way of support. One other thing I plan to do is contact the big local paper that I read daily and encourage them to use more McClatchy articles; they’re waaaaaay too heavy on AP usage.
Maria finally makes a statement and has it read on television news she used to work for. She admits the affair but blames the HotMail hacker for ruining lives by sending the e-mails to The State.
http://www.thestate.com/sanford/story/844984.html
See, it’s not the Governor or Maria who are to blame. It’s the people who found out about it and told others who caused the problem here. They are well-matched in their shifting responsibility to others. It’s his wife’s fault for not being a better sport and giving him permission to carry on.
Of course, it’s just a matter of time until the ‘hacker’ is identified. The message to The State must be traceable. So, the NYT story got some things right and somethings wrong. Still, why didn’t she tell the Governor about this? She’s had six months. Did he tell Maria that the wife found out in January? I would guess he did.
I meant more than 50 years after he ran for President.
If this affair destroys Sanford’s White House hopes, why isn’t Ensign suffering the same fate? He seems to think that by “confessing” at this time, the public will develop amnesia about his sex life by 2012 — and considering that the majority of Nevadans don’t seem to care what he did, I’d guess he’s right. The problem to me is, Ensign seems to be the more egregious of the two. His mistress WORKED FOR HIM, her husband WORKED FOR HIM, money changed hands, and the cover-up seems to be emanating directly from the religious right. Why is he not suffering the slamming Sanford’s getting?
The Sunday Morning talking heads wrote him off as well as far as 2012. Ensign didn’t make quite the spectacle of himself that Sanford did at his teary confessionial news conference. He didn’t compare himself to King David. He didn’t leave a state government without an official decider for a week. Sanford story has more of a lingering soap opera and suspense drama that will keep the press covering it.
The State just put out another story saying the SC GOP leadership is going to ask for Sanford’s resignation next week. The pattern seems to be that Governors have to resign (Blogo, Spitzer, Sanford) but Senators get to stay (Ensign, Vitter, Burris, Craig).
Perhaps they don’t have anybody ready to primary Ensign? That’d be my guess as to why he’s not getting the same treatment as Sanford.
And I’ll further guess that there wasn’t anybody to whom Ensign posed a political threat, unlike Lindsey Graham or Jim DeMint…
He’s the lamest of lame ducks if he stays. Last week, the state legislature overrode ten of his vetoes in one day.
Which also says something about the legislature in that state, must be feeling pressure to move to the left.
And which also says something about Graham/DeMint: they can’t afford to be primaried by someone like Sanford if he has nowhere else to move up the foodchain, because a third and more moderate candidate might win or a Dem might win after an ugly primary.
You know, I think this is an opportunity to double-down on spending for progressive candidates in that state. Wonder what the pipeline looks like for candidates on the left?
I think “moving to the left” in South Carolina is akin to someone moving from hanging on to the cliff by his/her fingernails —-> hanging on by the tips of his/her fingers, or perhaps palm of the hand.
Those guys are so far to the right . . . . Well, you finish the sentence.
Rayne, you are kidding, aren’t you?
Nope. I’m not kidding, Gerald.
Why is the legislature vetoing Sanford so much, and on what? Let’s start there and pick it apart.
Granted, change isn’t something which happens over night, good gods don’t I know it. I became an activist to volunteer for Howard Dean’s campaign in 2003, and during the last six years it’s seemed like we’ve been walking through molasses on a January day. Worse yet, we are far from done as Obama’s moderate positions have demonstrated; we have a very long way to go before we become a truly progressive nation again.
But the change comes with seizing opportunities as they arise. Sanford is one of them, and frankly, he has been for sometime but those of us outside SC didn’t know it. Where was Sanford going to go next in terms of holding office? Seriously, where? I’ve yet to read anything which suggested there was a House slot at which he could aim, and his name has been bandied about for a run at POTUS for some time.
There’s at least one compromised member of the Senate in SC as well, only one big misstep or a past misstep which could be revealed and the senior Senate seat would be open to primary.
And there’s 18 months to two years to shake this out, that’s enough time to make real change happen on the ground as it did this last two years.
Hell yeah I’m serious.
Rayne,
Sanford is a dead issue except that the powers that be might keep him around to keep the Lt Gov from getting a head start on the next Governor’s election. Granted I too have thought he was an idiot for some time, but he was still a “southern idiot.” As for the House, he was in it for 6 years and quit to prepare for a run at the Governor’s job. Possibly he would have gone back to it, but I doubt it. No he would have probably ended up working for either a Republican or a Democratic President in some position but that was before he showed his a*** so badly.
If you are saying Sen Graham is in peril, well he is an acquaintance of mine, has been in my mom’s house, and there have been rumours about him, especially on the progressive blogs, but I think he is safe barring a heretofore unknown scandal. A scandal can bring most anyone down if it is great enough.
Despite spending 31 years in the Navy and another 5 or 6 as a civilian on one ocean or another, I am still a born and bred South Carolinian and I can only chuckle at what you said.