Gov. Sanford tries to reignite old flame

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) admitted to reporters Wednesday
that he spent last weekend in Florida with Maria Belen Chapur, the
Argentine woman whose yearlong affair with Sanford nearly cost the
governor his job last summer.

Questions first arose about the governor’s whereabouts after the gossip
website Gawker received numerous tips on Monday from people who claimed
to have seen the couple together in the Florida Keys.

Asked about the trip during an unrelated news conference, Sanford didn’t flinch.

“As a matter of record,” Sanford said to the assembled reporters,
“everybody in this room knows exactly who I was with over the weekend;
that is no mystery to anybody, given what I said last summer.”

In late June of last year, Sanford admitted to carrying on a yearlong,
extramarital affair with Belen Chapur after he was caught returning
home from Argentina after telling his staff he was hiking the
Appalachian Trail. His wife, Jenny Sanford, divorced him earlier this
year.

The purpose of the Florida trip, Sanford said, was to rekindle the
couple’s romance and “to see if something could be restarted on that
front given the rather enormous geographic gulf between us.”

“Time will tell. I don’t know if it will or won’t.”