Mark Sanford is hitting the trail again. This time he’s aiming for the U.S. Senate, not Argentina.
The former South Carolina governor jumped into the state’s special Senate primary on Thursday, the ninth Republican to enter a race that has filled up in just twelve days. The move marks his second campaign of the year.
He briefly hopped in the race to reclaim his old 1st District House seat this spring, then dropped out on April 30, more than a month before the primary, saying he planned to build a movement around the national debt. He’s since decided the Senate is the place to make that argument.
The South Carolina Republican announced in a two-minute video from Coosaw Plantation, where he opened on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) death and the shortness of life, recalling that his own father was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease while he was in high school.
“We’re stewards of our lives and the things that we love for just a short time,” he said in the video.
Sanford went on to warn that the country is “borrowing from the future faster than we’re building it.” Over the next 100 days, he said, the United States will add about a trillion dollars to the national debt. If left unaddressed, that debt “will crush our economy. It’ll wipe out our savings, and it could even destroy our republic,” he added.
Affordability problems and inflation, he said, are “but symptoms of spending beyond our means as a country.”
Trump has already given his full endorsement to Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, the late senator’s sister, appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster and sworn in July 14.
GOP Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman have hopped in the race despite the Trump endorsement. Businessman Mark Lynch and attorney Duke Buckner are also in.
Early numbers show Sanford around 5 percent. An Emerson/Nexstar poll from July 16 had Norman at 16, Nordone at 6, and nearly one in five Republicans still undecided.
Sanford has one of the stronger fiscal records in the field. Citizens Against Government Waste and the National Taxpayers Union both gave him top marks during his time in Congress on spending and tax votes. Cato once called him the most fiscally conservative governor in the country. He kept a three-term limit pledge in the 1990s, cut DMV wait times as governor, and conserved more land than any of his predecessors.
His personal history is more complicated. The 2009 disappearance, explained at the time as a hike on the Appalachian Trail, ended his marriage and his national standing for years. He was later named in the Olivia Nuzzi–Ryan Lizza disclosures. He won his House seat back in 2013, lost it in 2018 to a Trump-backed challenger, and briefly ran against Trump in the 2020 primary before dropping out.
The first public sign of this latest bid came July 16, when he converted his old House committee into a Senate account at the FEC. He is expected to formally file in coming days. Democrat Annie Andrews is already on the November ballot.
Sanford closed his announcement video by talking about inheritance. “Our founding fathers and those who fought to protect our country’s ideals have given us a mighty birthright,” he said. “We borrow it for a time from those who follow us.”
The primary is August 11.
