The laid-back, sometimes impertinent voice of Mark Sanford’s rise to the governor’s office and the first years of his administration is resigning after four tumultuous years.

Will Folks said Wednesday he has resigned as Sanford’s press secretary, but the 30-year-old Columbia native doubts he will be going far.

Folks will leave Sanford’s office Aug. 1 to run his own political consulting business, Viewpolitik.

He hopes one of his first clients is his old boss.

“I’ve expressed a strong desire to the governor to have a role on his campaign, and I think he wants that to happen,” Folks said. “I definitely hope to play as big a part in the campaign as the governor would have me play.”

Folks has been with the Sullivan’s Island Republican since the earliest days of Sanford’s first campaign for the Governor’s Mansion. Sanford saw an opinion column Folks had written in The State newspaper about the need for small-business growth. Sanford was impressed. The two met and eventually launched in 2001 what was then a long-shot campaign for governor.

Folks early on grew adept at speaking and writing “Sanfordese” — the governor’s own particular cadence and sentence structure that features lots of lines that begin with, “At the end of the day,” or, “We’ve said from the beginning.”

But in the past few years, Folks also has become a lightning rod of criticism for Sanford and the administration. He has sparred with lawmakers, state agency directors and others who were critical of Sanford or his policies. He also has caused controversy by his own missteps.

After then-Ways and Means Committee chairman Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, criticized Sanford’s budget vetoes in 2004, Folks said Harrell and other House leaders were too busy trying to be the “mayor of Importantville.”

Having the reputation as the governor’s attack dog has created “a considerable list of people that won’t be knocking on the door” to hire him as a political consultant, Folks said. “But there are a considerable number of people who will be knocking on the door, because they believe that all of the things that our administration has stood for on the issues are the right stands.”

Folks makes no apologies for how he has handled the job, which paid him $61,800 a year. “We have always argued the merits of our ideas, and we’ve always done so aggressively.”

Perhaps that comment about Harrell is an exception, Folks admitted. After that statement was printed, he said, “the governor did take me aside and say, ‘I didn’t see the merit-based argument there.’”

He will not, he said, miss the long hours, especially as he prepares to marry lobbyist Ashley Smith, 25, in October. He also will not miss “a lot of the sniping. A lot of people would say I’m sniper-in-chief, but...”

Politics can create odd relationships, he said. If one only saw the news or read the papers, it would be easy to assume he and people like Sen. Joel Lourie, D-Richland, despise one another.

The truth, Folks said, is he admires people like Lourie “for the passion they bring to their issues and their beliefs.”

Lourie understands what Folks is saying.

“We disagreed on a lot of issues, but he’s someone I consider a friend,” Lourie said. “He brought a new dimension to the role. Given that we disagree on many things that happen between the governor’s office and the Legislature, I’ve found him to be a great guy.”

Lourie does have some advice for Folks, who became known for the baseball cap that rarely left his head and the tattered clothes he tended to wear during the campaign.

“He could update his wardrobe a little,” said Lourie, president of Lourie’s department store.

Rep. Michael Thompson, R-Anderson, said Folks has “a very quick mind. He’s very intelligent. I know he will be successful in his new endeavor.”

Sanford speechwriter Joel Sawyer will be interim press secretary.

Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658 or asheinin@thestate.com