Mark Sanford looks down during a news conference in which he admitted an affair. Some Sanford trips were taxpayer-paid

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has taken at least three taxpayer-paid trips to Argentina, however, it’s unclear whether he met his girlfriend during any of them.

At his news conference in Columbia Wednesday, Sanford said he paid for his most recent trip with his own money. “It was my own ticket,” he told reporters.


But sometime after his 2002 election as governor, Sanford traveled to Argentina on the dime of the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

The trip was in June 2008, after he met the woman. Sanford said Wednesday he met her eight years ago, though a romantic relationship did not develop until one year ago.

Sanford also traveled to China and Brazil through the state commerce department, and a review of its records late last year by state press found that taxpayers footed a total bill of $21,488 in Sanford travel. The governors’ office also spent $1,976 in travel for Sanford, according to the review.

In his January 2007 State of the State address, Sanford used changing air travel times between Miami and Buenos Aires as an example of technological innovations being carried out in his state.

“The Pan Am Clipper Class used to be the envy of airline travel. One of their planes would fly 32 passengers at 150 miles per hour from point A to point B. The Miami to Buenos Aires flight took 6 days with numerous crew stops along the way,” he said.

“The new Boeing 787, being in large part produced here in South Carolina, will soon take 300 passengers at 560 miles an hour on a 9 hour trip straight from Miami to Buenos Aires,” he added.

U.S. taxpayers twice footed the bill for Sanford’s Latin American travel, although the timing of the trips appears to pre-date his 8-year-long relationship.

As a member of the U.S. House in 1995, well before the time before he said he met the woman, Sanford traveled with other lawmakers on a “co-del” to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

A fiscal hawk, Sanford at the time said he agonized over whether the trip, which cost taxpayers $10,000, was a proper expenditure of public funds.

“I know politically it's not the right thing ever to go on any trip," Sanford told Charleston’s Post and Courier newspaper after returning. "I was skeptical [about joining the delegation], but I learned a lot," he said, adding he went at the request of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Sanford made a second taxpayer-paid trip with members of Congress three years later.

In 1997, Sanford pointed to the U.S. embassy in Argentina as an example of wasteful State Department spending when he was trying to cut the department’s budget.