Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

June 24, 2009

Sanford Due Back, But From Where?

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) will return to work today, the Columbia State reports, "cutting short a mysterious hiking trip along the Appalachian Trail" if that's where he's really been.

WYFF-TV reports Sanford's state vehicle "was tracked down, not to the Appalachian Trail, but to the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta." A federal agent spotted Sanford in the airport boarding a plane.

However, CNN has pictures of a car believed to be Sanford's but at a different airport in South Carolina. There is a sleeping bag in the back seat.

Meanwhile, Sanford's wife said yesterday she still hadn't heard from her husband and wasn't concerned, but said "he had left to have time to write." The governor's staff still insists he's on a hiking trip.

Politico says Sanford's "disappearing act is reviving an often-whispered, if rarely written, question about presidential hopefuls: Just how strange is too strange?"

Update: Returning home, Sanford tells The State newspaper that he was in Argentina, not on the Appalachian Trail as his staff had said in official statements. He said he had considered hiking the trail but wanted to do "something exotic."

"Sanford said he was alone on the trip. He declined to give any additional details about what he did other than to say he drove along the coastline."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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