The world’s most famous Appalachian trail hiker is back.
Disgraced former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will announce on Wednesday that he’s running for Congress, NBC News confirmed.
Sanford, who resigned two-and-a-half years following revelations of an extramarital affair, will run in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by Republican Tim Scott, who was appointed to fill Jim DeMint’s Senate seat.
Sanford on Tuesday opened up to the National Review on why he was running. He touched on his 2009 disappearance and affair with Argentine television reporter Maria Belen Chapur.
At the time of the affair, Sanford told his staff he was hiking the Appalachian trail, when in truth, he was canoodling with Chapur in South America.
Sanford, however, told the conservative publication that voters concerned about the affair must “look under the hood.”
“Don’t judge any one person by their best day, don’t judge them by their worst day. Look at the totality, the whole of their life, and make judgments accordingly,” he said.
Sanford’s ex-wife, Jenny, who was also considering making a run for Scott’s seat, told reporters Monday that she would not put her name on the ballot. She said her job as a mother was more “more important, much more rewarding, and much more productive.”
“The idea of killing myself to run for a seat for the privilege of serving in a dysfunctional body under John Boehner when I have an eighth-grader at home just doesn’t make sense to me,” she said.
