Sanford Censured: The Tragi-Comedy (Almost) Ends

South Carolina’s “seven month nightmare” is almost over.

Except it wasn’t so much a “nightmare” as it was a tragi-comedy, the alternately sad and annoying story of an already virtually powerless chief executive who decided to blow his remaining credibility – and his marriage – on a mid-life crisis and subsequent public bout with narcissism.

Oh, the “drama” also left the reform movement in South Carolina “twitching in a ditch,” as one lawmaker described it FITS this week.

Anyway, in what we hope will be one of the final episodes of the Palmetto State’s enduring “Days of our Governor” drama, the S.C. House of Representatives voted 102-11 Wednesday to formally censure Gov. Mark Sanford (a.k.a. the “Luv Gov”) for bringing “ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame” to himself, his office and his state.

State Senators may follow suit with a censure resolution of their own, although they may not.

Does it really matter?

A censure is nothing but an “official evasion,” anyway, another reminder that in the political world, people with skeletons in their closets rarely hold anyone else accountable for their actions.

Last month, a House subcommittee voted 18-6 against impeaching the governor for multiple ethics violations – effectively ending a six-month struggle over how to handle the governor’s indiscretions that was dominated by political considerations.

For example, after fearing that he might be “railroaded out of office” at one point, an alleged backroom deal with S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell gave the governor new life, leading to an impeachment “show trial” in which the deck was stacked in Sanford’s favor from the beginning.

Additionally, S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster – the one public official who should have conducted a real investigation into Sanford’s shenanigans (i.e. one with subpoenas, etc.) – passed the buck not once, but twice in an effort to prevent S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer from gaining a leg up in the 2010 gubernatorial race.

For those of you just returning to South Carolina from a seven month vacation (to Mars), Sanford mysteriously disappeared from the state last summer at the conclusion of the 2009 legislative session.

After telling his staff that he was “hiking the Appalachian trail,” Sanford was busted days later at the Atlanta airport by Gina Smith of The State newspaper. Smith was acting on an anonymous tip that the governor was actually in Argentina, not hiking the trail.

When Smith caught Sanford getting off of a plane from Buenos Aires, the drama was on.

At a bizarre State House press conference on the afternoon of June 24, Sanford admitted having an affair with his Argentine lover, Maria Belen Chapur, and lying to his family, staff and citizens of the state about his whereabouts. Days later, just when it appeared the scandal had died down, Sanford granted an ill-fated interview with the Associated Press in which he called Chapur his “soul mate,” admitted “crossing lines” with other women and said that he was trying to “fall back in love” with his wife – who ended up moving out of the governor’s mansion in August and announcing in December that she was divorcing him.

Subsequent investigations revealed that Sanford received first-class plane ticket upgrades in violation of state policy, misused the state plane for personal and political reasons and failed to report numerous airplane flights that were provided to him by friends and political allies – which could still expose him to a tax liability.

In addition to spending $185,000 in campaign funds on his private defense, Sanford spent an undisclosed amount of taxpayer money hiring an attorney (this dork) to represent “the office of the governor.”

Also, it seems fairly self-evident at this point that tax money was also spent facilitating his romance with Chapur, as after being busted the governor returned roughly $3,000 to the state treasury for a 2008 “economic development” trip that appears to have been set up exclusively for the purpose of a romantic rendezvous.

While the S.C. House was slapping him on the wrist, Sanford was more than living up to his “walk humbly” shtick at a S.C. Budget and Control Board meeting Wednesday – effusively praising his longtime rival, S.C. Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, for the latter’s role in crafting an incentives package to lure aircraft manufacturer Boeing to the S.C. Lowcountry.

“This wouldn’t have happened without you,” Sanford told Leatherman, telling the Senator that he should frame a copy of the incentives paperwork on his office wall.

WEB EXTRA

Amended House Censure Resolution