Sanford-Maria

"I've let down a lot of people, that's the bottom line," he said Wednesday. "I hurt her [his mistress], I hurt my wife, I hurt my boys. ... I hurt a lot of different folks."

Sanford was evasive about the identity of his "dear, dear friend," but several Argentine media outlets have named a 43-year-old Buenos Aires businesswoman as Sanford's "Maria."

Despite the best efforts of cheating politicians to keep the identities of their other women secret, it's usually a matter of time before they are publicly exposed. When the tryst between then New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer and a call girl who went by the name 'Kristen' was exposed in 2008, media outlets across the country scrambled to find her. After revealing herself on MySpace, Ashley Alexandra Dupre managed to parlay her new found fame into a hit song on the Internet. Spitzer, meanwhile, was forced to resign.