It’s an overcast, windy 50 degrees in downtown Columbia on April 7. Activists have been setting up a tent city all morning in Finlay Park, which is just around the corner from the Governor’s Mansion.

They’re calling the tent compound Sanfordville — a spoof on Gov. Mark Sanford’s last name and homeless encampments that popped up across the country during the Great Depression. They were dubbed “Hoovervilles,” because of then-President Herbert Hoover’s ineffective economic policies.

Here, about half a dozen camping tents surround a makeshift sign reading “Welcome to Sanfordville.”

Half a dozen camping tents surround a makeshift sign reading “Welcome to Sanfordville.”

At a little before noon there are more members of the press and political consultants wandering the tent city than there are actual protestors. The weather is bad. People keep looking up at the dark clouds. A newscaster tries a few takes but the wind keeps getting in the way. Off camera, a 58-year-old man, with a scruffy beard and cataracts, asks former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges for a little money. He says he lives just a block away. He fell down on some steps this morning and hurt his hands and his face. He just needs $19.

High-profile Columbia attorney Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, rode with Hodges to the Sanfordville tent city this morning.

“I think it’s important for people to demonstrate,” Harpootlian says.

“This is the kind of thing that I think demonstrates what a terrible mistake we made in 2002,” he says of Sanford’s election. “When you go strictly partisan this is what happens, you get a guy like Mark Sanford who has not advanced the ball in this state in any way in six years. I can’t think of a single accomplishment. Not one. Whereas Hodges got the lottery passed, increased teacher salaries … you don’t see any of that with this guy, because he doesn’t believe in government. Maybe he just likes the free house.”

The man who had hit up Hodges for some cash is named James White. He’s tall with not many teeth. He wears a tattered green jacket with a small round sticker imploring Sanford to accept federal stimulus money for South Carolina. White knows the Sanford narrative well. He’s been following the governor’s antics since a showdown between Sanford and the S.C. Employment Security Commission began in December over jobless benefits and data.

White is here, he says, because people are starving. There’s crime. The children of this state need a quality education. And because, well, he just fell down some steps and he would really like it if he could get that $19.

So far the morning showing in Sanfordville has looked like a gathering of National Public Radio liberals and a hodgepodge of Democratic also-rans. Community activist and former Democratic state Sen. Tom Turnipseed of Columbia has appeared. So has Barack Obama’s former campaign director in South Carolina, Trav Robertson. And previous state Democratic Party director Lachlan McIntosh made the rounds as S.C. Senate Democratic Caucus director Phil Bailey spoke with reporters.

If there was any angst and protest in Finlay Park at the time, it was taking place about a quarter mile away, where a group of homeless men and women huddled in heavy clothes on a park bench.

“In my opinion he’s been stressing people out lately,” Nick, a 52-year-old homeless veteran, says of the governor. But he doesn’t blame his homelessness on Sanford. “My condition doesn’t have anything to do with what he’s doing,” he says. “What he’s doing is affecting thousands upon thousands of people, thousands of children.”

Nick says he is a Republican who voted for people like Sanford.

“But I didn’t vote for his ideas,” he says. If he knew Sanford was going act the way he has on the stimulus package, imperiling many teachers’ jobs by not accepting part of the money, he says he would have claimed himself “an independent or something.” 

“All he has to do is one thing,” Nick says. “Don’t be selfish. Look out for the future of these kids.”

Nick and his friend Robert, 51 and also homeless, say they might head over to Sanfordville to see what’s going on, but for now they aren’t too interested. The news vans are still there.

Back at Sanfordville the clouds have opened a little. Harpootlian looks up at the sky and around at the expanse of empty tents, TV cameras and cable wires snaking along the ground. He shakes his head. “And now it’s raining,” he says.