The Hill has a report today on five recent moves on the part of former South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford, that are poisoning his efforts to be elected to the House. The guy uses people and does so quite openly.
Among the five no-no’s is this:
Sanford asks his ex-wife Jenny Sanford to be his campaign manager
Jenny Sanford was her husband’s campaign manager and top political adviser for most of his time as governor, until his “Appalachian Trail” affair ended their marriage and derailed his career.
She has been rumored to have political aspirations of her own, and before he jumped in to the race Sanford wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be running against her in the GOP primary.
He told The Hill in February that he’d visited Jenny at her Sullivan Island, S.C. home to make sure she wouldn’t run for the House seat before deciding on his own campaign.
But Jenny Sanford told New York magazine that she’d informed her ex-husband the day before that she wasn’t planning to run — and that he came that day to ask her to oversee his campaign.
When she refused, the notoriously frugal politician reportedly tried to sweeten the pot.
“I could pay you this time,” he said.