MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — GOP Rep. Mark Sanford has spent the past three years torching President Donald Trump, firmly establishing himself as a staunch critic of the commander-in-chief who, unlike so many others in his party, never came around.

Now he’s suddenly at risk of losing his job over it.


The once seemingly safe former South Carolina governor, who’s never lost a bid for political office, is sweating in the final days of his primary race against state Rep. Katie Arrington, a political newcomer who’s cast Sanford as a disloyal Never-Trumper.

Over the past several weeks, Sanford has launched an 11th-hour TV advertising blitz going directly after Arrington, a sure indication that he’s under duress. He’s barnstorming his Lowcountry district. And on Sunday, he released a full-page letter to a local newspaper in which he pleaded with voters to “look at the list of things I have gotten done on your behalf” and asked them to call him on his personal cell phone if they had any questions.

Sanford is one of a string of Republican lawmakers under mounting pressure over their allegiance to the president. Alabama Rep. Martha Roby, who vowed not to vote for then-candidate Trump after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women, has been forced into a primary runoff. On Tuesday, Virginia Rep. Scott Taylor is facing a long-shot challenge from a former local official who has highlighted critical comments the congressman made about the president.

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During an interview at an outdoor bar on the Mount Pleasant waterfront Saturday evening, Sanford expressed concern that a loss in his race would have a chilling effect on those Republicans willing to speak out against the administration.

“I think it’s entirely appropriate to say ‘I agree’ when I agree and ‘I disagree’ when I disagree. That’s the American way. That’s what our entire political system is based on, is the fact that we can have dissent,” Sanford said. “And it can be painful — going along to get along is the way of Washington. But keeping that as a part of our political tradition, I think, is vital.”

Most people here have a hard time seeing Sanford, a household name in South Carolina who was first elected to political office in 1994, losing on Tuesday. While the primary could end up closer than what the 58-year-old congressman is accustomed to, he is widely expected to pull it out.

Still, the last-minute $380,000 barrage of commercials from Sanford — a notoriously frugal figure who hasn’t spent money on TV advertising in five years — has been striking.

“It's easier to get the truth out of the White House than to get lunch money out of Mark Sanford, so I'd say that any race in which a challenger convinces him to spend real money is a serious one,” said Rob Godfrey, a former top adviser to ex-South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley.

The congressman isn’t sounding so sure of his prospects. When a restaurant-goer stopped him Saturday evening to ask about what polling showed, Sanford hesitated.

"They say different things,” he responded.

Sanford, long known for wearing his emotions openly and speaking his mind, has been one of the most high-profile Republican Trump critics in Congress. He’s called the president’s tariffs on steel and aluminum “an experiment with stupidity.” He’s called Trump’s disparaging remarks about Haiti and African nations “something stupid.” He’s said that Trump has done some “weird stuff” in office.

During the 2016 campaign, Sanford said Trump should “just shut up” and stop focusing so much on his critics. He’s said that the president was “partially” to blame for the toxic rhetoric that led to the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.). He’s said that “trading slights seems essential” to Trump’s personality, and he gave an extensive interview to POLITICO Magazine in which he said the president had “fanned the flames of intolerance.”

Sanford insists that his discord with the president isn’t anything personal, but rather rooted in deeply held beliefs. As an example, he points to his dispute with the administration over its proposal to open the South Carolina coastline to drilling. After hearing complaints from constituents, he said he had little choice but to raise concerns with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, to whom he’d grown close while they served together in Congress — and who was almost his roommate.

“I’m not looking for disagreement with the administration,” Sanford said. “But it comes to, you cannot walk away from it if you’re really listening to the people I spend so much time with here at home.”

Yet he’s given an opening to Arrington, who’s betting that voters in the conservative district, which stretches from the Georgia border to north of Charleston, want a congressperson who’s in lockstep with the president. The 47-year-old state representative has aired a spree of TV commercials portraying Sanford as an avowed Trump opponent, including one that shows the congressman savaging the president in a series of spliced-up cable news interviews.

Much of her bid has been oriented around the president. She has tapped Mike Biundo, who served as national senior adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign, as a top strategist.

In a Sunday afternoon interview following an event at the welcome center for the U.S.S. Yorktown battleship, Arrington said voters in the district had grown tired of Sanford’s opposition to the president.

“We need a seat at the table. Our president is going to be the president until 2020 at a minimum, or 2024, and Mark has ostracized him to the point where there will never be a seat at the table for him,” she said.

As he comes under assault, Sanford is trying to make the case to voters that his record has often been in line with the White House. He’s begun airing a face-to-camera commercial in which he says he’s “joined with the president and others in efforts to build the wall.”

Sanford is also questioning his rival’s Trump credentials. The congressman has pointed out that Arrington supported Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in the 2016 primary. And last month, the Associated Press reported that in a March 2016 Facebook post, Arrington lavished praise on former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for rebuking then-candidate Trump.

Asked about her past support for Rubio, Arrington said she followed the lead of South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and then-Gov. Nikki Haley, both of whom backed the Florida senator. Once Trump won the GOP nomination, Arrington said, she was fully on board with him.

Those who know Sanford say it’s not surprising to see him take on the president so aggressively. During his eight-year tenure as governor, he established a reputation as a political warrior who relished taking on those in power. He routinely battled with Republican leaders in the state legislature, and in 2009 he drew national headlines for rejecting federal stimulus funds.

“What people really like about Sanford is his authenticity. What he says is in accordance with his core beliefs. They aren’t necessarily in lockstep with what’s politically expedient,” said state Sen. Tom Davis, a former Sanford chief of staff. “That’s his niche in the political marketplace, he’s kind of carved that out.”

Scott English, another former Sanford chief of staff, said the congresswoman was well aware of what he was getting into with Trump.

“Mark knows his position, he knows the consequences that go with it, and he’s willing to take the stand nonetheless,” English said.

As he walked along the Mount Pleasant waterfront, Sanford was warmly greeted by constituents — some of whom called him “Mark” and thanked him for being willing to speak out against the president.

"I think the perception is you're trying to do the right thing," one man told him.

Yet Sanford’s problems, some Republicans are convinced, go beyond his strained relationship with Trump. Some say there’s overall fatigue with a politician who first sought office during the 1994 Republican revolution. Others say there’s lingering anger over the 2009 scandal surrounding the extramarital affair he had with an Argentine woman, which derailed his presidential ambitions.

Arrington has tried to exploit those issues. “Bless his heart, but it’s time for Mark Sanford to take a hike — for real this time,” Arrington says in one TV ad, a reference to Sanford’s lie that he was hiking the Appalachian trail when he was actually with his lover overseas.

Some Republicans believe that Sanford has a ceiling on the amount of support he can get. The question, they say, is whether it’s low enough for Arrington to surpass him.

“I do think he's taking this race seriously, and he probably he needs to,” said former state Rep. Chip Limehouse, who hails from a prominent Charleston family and has known Sanford for years. “It's one of the stiffest challenges he's faced, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens next Tuesday."

Sanford, though, says he doesn’t regret anything he’s said about the president.

“Fundamentally, no one gets the calibration perfectly, but that’s what leadership is. Leadership is saying, there may be some blowback, but I believe ‘X,’ I believe ‘Y,’” he said. “That’s just the cost in life if you’re going to lead in anything you do.”

