Hopefully, come Wednesday, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will be back at work, as his office has said he will be. And hopefully the official explanation for his having gone off the radar for almost a week, that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, will ultimately prove to have been true. But on Tuesday, the story was still just getting more puzzling.
Sanford staffers say they have spoken with the governor. But CNN sent a reporter to Sullivan's Island, S.C., where Sanford's wife and children have been vacationing, and it turns out she still hasn't heard from him. "I am being a mom today,"Jenny Sanford said. "I have not heard from my husband. I am taking care of my children."
And a local television station, WYFF, has sources with a story that seems to conflict with the one Sanford's office is telling. WYFF reports that its sources say the car Sanford drove out of the governor's mansion "was tracked down, not to the Appalachian Trail, but to the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta." The station also says "a federal agent spotted Sanford in the airport boarding a plane."
So far, WYFF is the only outlet with that story, so it shouldn't be taken as gospel. And it's altogether possible that Sanford was flying to a northern part of the Appalachian Trail, planning to hike back down south. But this is an odd new twist nonetheless.
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