The Slatest

Will Mark Sanford Vote for Donald Trump? He’s Still Thinking.

South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford shakes hands with Sen. Ted Cruz during a GOP primary campaign event in February.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

CLEVELAND—On Wednesday, South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford stood on the edge of Cleveland’s Public Park, surveying the heavily policed potpourri of political activists milling under the hot sun. He had just attended a rally at the Great Lakes Science Center, which featured Donald Trump’s arrival by helicopter as the theme music from the Harrison Ford movie Air Force One blasted on the ground. Sanford has sent mixed signals about whether he would support his party’s nominee, so I asked him whether he had made up his mind. He hasn’t.

Michelle Goldberg: Does this all feel shameful to you?

Mark Sanford: In what sense?

That witch trial last night! Is that the Republican Party you signed up for?

I think it’s well documented I’m struggling with this larger theme. I think that parties, whether from the right or from the left, should be about the ideas that they believe in, and what they stand for, and not simply about tearing the other person down. And I think part of what I’ve struggled with with the Trump campaign, whether it’s “Little Marco” or Carly’s face or—go down the list—has been this pejorative tone toward others that really doesn’t fit with the exchange of ideas that politics is supposed to be about.

Have you decided whether you’re voting for Trump or not?

No.

In the party, is there soul-searching going on about how it came to this?

Obviously. Whether it’s colleagues from Congress or people I represent back home, this has been anything but a typical political season. What many people are stuck with [is] some level of malicious intent on email servers versus total weirdness with regard to the Trump campaign. So, yeah, there’s a lot of soul-searching.

You don’t usually see white supremacists come out to celebrate the ascension of the Republican nominee. I know that Donald Trump isn’t responsible for who supports him as opposed to whom he supports. But do you worry about the kind of people that are now being attracted to the message of your party, and to how they’re hearing that message?

There are going to be outliers for any party, so I don’t get wrapped around that. What I would say is, what I’ve struggled with has been the degree with which he conveys violence [in his rhetoric]. When you say, “I wish I could hit you in the face, and hey, if I can’t, I’ll pay your legal fees,” that’s not like anything else we’ve ever heard. I think that those kind of words from the top have a ripple effect with supporters.

Two, I’m just leery of where we are in a historic sense. Whether you liked Obama or not, there was a degree of cult of personality around his campaign. We’re seeing that now mirrored on the right. You know, let’s do a flyby with the helicopter. I just think that our nation was founded based on laws over men or women. We’re all fallible, and to put all your hopes and dreams in one leader, whether it’s on the right or the left, is a big step from the system that the founding fathers gave us.

Do you worry that our democracy cannot necessarily survive Donald Trump?

I wouldn’t go that far. We have systems, we have institutions in place that are certainly bigger than any one man or any one woman. But it will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.