Sanford considered quitting, carries on

by Mark Silva

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford allows that he considered quitting as he acknowledged the affair with an Argentinian that carried him away over the Father's Day weekend, but says he is determined to see his term out.

Sanford, 49, spoke with the Associated Press on Sunday as he was leaving his Sullivans Island beach home -- his wife and four boys leaving in a separate car, he acknowledged. And Maria Belen Chapur, 41, the Buenos Aires woman involved with the Republican governor, also acknowledged the affair on Sunday -- the divorced mother of two calling it "very painful to me, my two children, my entire family and close friends."

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Sanford said he had thought about stepping down to rebuild his life. But spiritual advisers and political associates urged him to instead "fight to restore people's trust" and finish out the 18 months left in his term.

"Resigning would be the easiest thing to do," Sanford said Sunday.

Among those spiritual advisers:Warren ''Cubby'' Culbertson, who joined the governor and his wife Sunday afternoons in May as they hosted five other couples at the executive mansion for a spiritual "boot camp." They spoke of forgiveness and "not loving your wife as Christ loved the church."

Group leader Culbertson did not tell the other four couples what he and his wife, Susan, had known for months: The governor was having an affair with the woman in Argentina. When Jenny Sanford confronted her husband in January after finding a letter to "Maria" among his official papers, the governor turned to Culbertson.

In a weekend interview with The Associated Press in Columbia, Culbertson said he believed his friend when he said that this was his only marital transgression. He thinks Sanford was simply caught off guard by "the power of darkness."

"Part of walking humbly is you've got to listen to your critics out there," Sanford said outside his beach home Sunday. "And all of us will have critics, and the higher you go, I suppose, the more critics you have."

Salvaging his marriage of 20 years is another question. His wife, Jenny, and four sons were headed to his family's farm -- where his 83-year-old mother lives -- in Beaufort.

"I am sorry," Sanford said, repeating a public apology that he has issued to family, friends and his state since acknolwedging last week that he had gone to Argentina, not on a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail as his office had said, when he disappeared for several days a week ago. "I apologize for letting everyone down."

Sanford, like Nevada Sen. John Ensign, who also recently acknowledged an extramarital affair, had been considered among the Republican Party's prospects for the 2012 campaigns. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, another party star, allowed Sunday that the Republican "brand'' has suffered with Sanford's and Ensign's admissions.