Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford can sure wreck a hotel room, according to one politician.
A new book on politics includes an anecdote about Sanford — shortly before he was disgraced in a sex scandal — traveling to Alabama in the winter of 2009 to give a well-received speech to the state’s Republican party.
In his new book Storming the State House, Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard describes how two GOP party aides found Sanford’s hotel room a mess with cushions thrown about as they went to retrieve the then-sitting governor before the dinner.
“Upon entering the room, they found the cushions had been removed from the furniture and scattered around the room, some as if thrown and others as if arranged methodically,” Hubbard writes in the book. “Other pieces of furniture had been placed on the hotel’s balcony.”
The author notes that Sanford was “in the room alone the whole time” and that while he never saw the wrecked hotel room, the two aides described it to him as “strange.”
Hubbard also wrote that some Republicans at the dinner found it “odd” that Sanford kept wandering off throughout to speak on his cell phone, though they assumed it was for government business.
Just three months later, Sanford, who was then being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, admitted to having an extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman.
One possible reason for his behavior: Sanford later claimed his wife found out about the affair about the same time as the Alabama dinner.
In an interview with The Daily Caller while promoting the book in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Hubbard said Sanford later called him out of the blue to apologize about the media firestorm occurring right after his speech to the state’s Republicans.
“The Mark Sanford story should be a warning tale to every officeholder in the nation,” he writes in the book.
Reached by TheDC on Thursday, Sanford declined to comment.