Former Republican Rep. Mark Sanford is set to make a run for his former congressional seat, according to paperwork filed with South Carolina’s elections commission.
Sanford is a fixture in South Carolina politics, known nationally for his high-profile extramarital affair while serving as governor, his sharp criticism of President Donald Trump while serving in Congress and his quixotic 2020 presidential run against Trump.
He submitted paperwork recently to run in the already-crowded Republican primary in the first congressional district stretching from the Charleston area down the coast to Hilton Head Island, vacated by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) as she mounts a bid for governor. The election commission’s website shows Sanford as an “active” candidate.
The former Palmetto State politician — who slammed Trump for his brash personality and conduct during his first term — is seeking to reenter Republican politics even as Trump maintains his ironclad grip on the party.
Sanford did not respond to a call and text message from POLITICO, but he told the Post & Courier on Monday that “people have been telling me it’s time to get off the bleachers” and promised to focus his campaign on his longtime top issue: the national debt.
The former governor and member of Congress has a long record in state and national politics — and a history of making remarkable political comebacks. First elected to Congress in 1994, Sanford served in the seat he is once again seeking for nearly a decade before mounting a successful bid for governor in 2002. He also received early buzz as a potential 2012 presidential candidate.
But his political fortunes came to a crashing halt in 2009 when he disappeared from the state under the auspices of hiking on the Appalachian Trail — only later admitting he had taken part in an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina. Sanford declined to resign from his post, but ceded his chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association and quietly left office at the end of his second term.
He reentered politics just a few years later, announcing a bid for the first congressional district, winning a crowded primary and holding the seat until he lost to a Trump-backed primary challenger in 2018, only for a Democrat to go on to flip the seat in that year's midterms.
Sanford later launched a longshot presidential primary bid against Trump. He dropped out in November of 2019.
The South Carolina Republican is set to face off against several candidates in this June’s primary, including a popular state representative, a local Charleston county councilmember, and a retired lieutenant colonel who commanded the final flight of U.S. forces out of Afghanistan in 2021.
