Sanford files for the Lowcountry seat that he held for a total of six terms, focusing this time on the national debt.
COLUMBIA, S.C. โ Mark Sanford, former South Carolina governor and congressman, has announced he is entering the race for his former congressional seat.
Sanford filed the paperwork Monday to run for South Carolina’s First Congressional District Republican primary. He says he wants to focus on “reining in a federal government that has grown wildly beyond its constitutional limits, restoring financial sanity to Washington, and defending the individual freedoms that are the foundation of the American way of life.”
Sanford served three terms in Congress representing the First District (1995-2001), before serving two terms as the state’s governor (2003-2011), then returned to Congress again for three more terms representing the Lowcountry (2013-2019). He also mounted a presidential run in 2020, entering a crowded Republican field that included Donald Trump, but eventually ended his bid on November 12.
A fiscal conservative, the national debt is once again the focus of Sanford’s 2026 midterm campaign.ย
“Our nation’s debt is the issue that will define whether this country survives in the form we’ve known it,” said Sanford. “It will also define how young and old fare over the years ahead, because inflation and interest rates, the value of the dollar, and our ability to afford all that goes with building and sustaining our lives will be driven by what happens next in confronting Washington’s addiction to spending money we don’t have on programs we can’t afford.”
“I believe spending, the debt, and our government’s fiscal course is the defining issue of our time, and if we don’t do something about it now, the consequences will be damning for all of us.”
Sanford comes with a colorful past.ย
During his first term as governor, after the Republican-led state House of Representatives overrode all but one of Sanford’s vetoes on May 26, 2004, Sanford brought two live pigs to the State House floor to protest against members’ “pork projects.”
In 2009, Sanford disappeared for about a week in June. No one, not his staff, his wife, or the public knew where the governor was. Sanford had told his staff he was hiking the Appalachian Trail and did not respond to cell phone calls during that time. A reporter from The State newspaper in Columbia intercepted Sanford in the Atlanta airport, returning on a flight from Argentina. Sanford held a press conference a few hours later, admitting the was in South America visiting his mistress. In December of 2009, the SC House Judiciary Committee voted to censure Sanford over the scandal and the resolution was passed by the House of Representatives in January 2010.
