S.C. newspaper got tip about Gov. Sanford’s affair 6 months ago
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admitted to having an affair hours after Gina Smith, a reporter for The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., contronted him at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
But The State reports that it first heard of the possible affair in December, when an anonymous tipster sent copies of e-mail messages between Sanford and a woman named Maria in Argentina. The State has posted copies of the emails on thestate.com
According to the New York Times:
Reporters sent e-mail back to the originating e-mail address and to the woman, whose e-mail address was included, in an effort to verify that the messages were genuine. They never heard back, and so the paper did not publish them until Wednesday, after Mr. Sanford admitted having an affair.
“We had not determined they were authentic,” Leroy Chapman, the political editor at The State, said of the e-mail. “What it was, was a puzzle piece that was hardly discernible.”
The New York Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times were among papers that led the front page with Sanford’s admission. The Washington Post led its page with a follow on the fatal Metro accident, but played the Sanford story at the top of its front page as well.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch carried an Associated Press story on Page A6 this morning.



Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980.
It really something when the political party of the Republicans,who seems to gave the image of the moral high ground,get so many of their members caught up in the destuction of extramartial affairs.Look like this is more than a Democrats only club.