It was a photo opportunity most politicians would kill for: the ribbon-cutting for an automotive research park providing 20,000 high-paying jobs.

For most new governors, it would have been a no-brainer: Get a shiny ceremonial shovel, a cool hard hat and, even better, credit for $2.6 billion of economic development.

But two weeks after taking office, Gov. Mark Sanford instead rained on Greenville's parade of dignitaries. He asked for 60 days to make sure it was a good deal.

In the business-friendly South Carolina Upstate, that amounted to a cardinal sin. People who weeks earlier had celebrated Sanford's inauguration publicly lambasted him.

"The normal thing would have been to have gone up there and slap everybody on the back, but I didn't do that and have been paying the price ever since," Sanford said last week. "But I didn't want to get a sorry deal for the taxpayers. Because I didn't do the normal thing, I've been beat up as this guy from the coast."

In less than two months, Gov. Sanford has proven himself to be exactly the same person as U.S. Rep. Sanford, a politician guided more by his internal compass than his party politician guided more by his internal compass than his party affiliation. He's a guy who can alternately please, confound and infuriate folks at any point in the political spectrum.

Through a series of atypical decisions and actions, Sanford has sparked questions ever since the invocation at his inauguration. In his first two months in office, Sanford has:

--?Proposed closing the Governor's Mansion because the state is broke.

--?Apologized for the Orangeburg Massacre, something no governor of either party had done in the 35 years since the incident occurred. Most had simply said they regretted it.

--?Banned state agencies from hiring lobbyists to lobby the state.

--?Vetoed a handful of local bills, which achieved such innocuous feats as forgiving missed school days.

As a result, the Republican love-fest that pundits predicted with the GOP in control of the governor's office and Legislature simultaneously has yet to be consummated. Oddly, it is Democrats who have come to sing Sanford's praises.

The new governor has even managed to aggravate members of his own county's legislative delegation by vetoing a bill near and dear to his party's heart.

"Things certainly aren't running as some outsiders predicted," said state Rep. John Graham Altman III, R-Charleston. "I'm unclear as to why the governor is doing some of the thing he's doing, but I support him 100 percent."

Sanford is used to feeding outside the trough. As congressman, he not only voted against pork for other parts of the country, he skewered pork headed for his own district.

College of Charleston political scientist Bill Moore said no one should be surprised by Sanford's way of governing.

"Mark's actions are predictable, which is doing things the more career politician is less likely to do," Moore said. "He does things based on what he believes rather than political expediency. The apology for the Orangeburg Massacre, his vetoes illustrate that."

Lawmakers diplomatically refer to spats with Sanford as "bumps in the road" and are confident the path will smooth out. There is always a learning curve for new governors, says House Majority Leader Rick Quinn.

"I've served with four governors and it always happens this way," Quinn said. "It takes a while to get used to their way of doing things. He's doing the same thing with vetoes that (Gov. David) Beasley and (Gov. Carroll) Campbell did."

Sanford ran for office as a Columbia outsider, which was not a stretch. Some suggested that one of his main campaign proposals, putting more constitutional officers into the governor's cabinet, would find a tepid reception at best in the General Assembly.

Lawmakers all swarmed around the new governor, who courted them daily during his transition, saying they were open to anything.

Then he was sworn in.

Sanford showed up in the same blue blazer he'd worn on the campaign trail, a jacket that has come to symbolize frugality as well as informality. Some politicos and pundits spent serious time analyzing Sanford's refusal to wear a suit to his swearing-in ceremony.

Even before that, he'd raised eyebrows. Sanford invited the Rev. Joe Darby of Charleston to give the invocation at the inaugural, a move applauded by blacks and Democrats but one that curled the lip of perhaps the state's most powerful Republican.

Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell of Charleston said Sanford's selection was inappropriate. Darby, after all, was one of the NAACP leaders enforcing an economic boycott of South Carolina because the Confederate battle flag continues to fly on Statehouse grounds.

Since that opening salvo, McConnell has been complimentary of the new governor, saying the missteps Sanford's made "are just part of the learning curve."

"He came up here largely naive in some ways about the environment he was in," McConnell said. "It requires a great deal of communication and cooperation to keep everybody happy and moving in one direction. One of his first big lessons was the veto."

Last month, Sanford vetoed a handful of the first bills to cross his desk, some of which forgave school days missed because of snow and a couple that made changes to county government agencies. One of those was a bill to combine Charleston County's election and voter registration boards. Sanford said he considered the bills unconstitutional local or special legislation that violated provisions of home rule.

Charleston lawmakers were livid, mainly because Sanford's staff didn't warn them. Altman called it a "drive-by veto."

Sanford said he met with Charleston lawmakers last week and explained, "It was our bad."

"My legislative team didn't handle it as efficiently as they could have," Sanford said. "We've made a course correction."

Sanford finds the executive branch of government a good fit. "I'm more suited for it," he said recently, joking that he likes to micro-manage all those departments and agencies.

He's as casual a governor as he was a candidate. Some lawmakers were surprised to see him moseying around the House floor chatting a few weeks after taking office. It's not unprecedented for governors to hang out with legislators, but Sanford even loiters around the Statehouse lobby sometimes, just yakking with the folks. He also holds office hours where he meets one-on-one with citizens with no staffers or security types hovering.

The governor maintains his business acumen is as valuable as his folksy manner. Sanford recently said that the deal for the Greenville automotive research park didn't have enough financial support, particularly from the private developer.

"We need to specifically lock down what his contribution is and consequently what share of the residuals would go to him versus the state," Sanford told the press. "I would have grave problems with a sweetheart deal where the developer makes a huge profit and the taxpayer in South Carolina has to take all the risk up front."

Sanford said it will take time for everyone to adjust to a new way of doing business; a $5 billion company just does not go through this much change at the top seamlessly. He predicted his administration would smooth out those bumps in the road, though perhaps not by the end of this legislative session.

So far, Sanford is getting high marks from an unlikely source. Even after Democrats lost the governor's office, and just about everything else, in the last election, they have been the group most willing to give the governor the traditional honeymoon.

Senate Democratic Leader John Land said it's too early to assess Sanford's performance, but said the governor has "made some real good decisions."

Black lawmakers have been particularly generous with Sanford following his apology for the Orangeburg Massacre, with Sen. Maggie Glover praising him in session for doing the right thing.

That apology does have some Democrats pushing for legislation that would set up an inquiry into what happened on that February night in 1968 when state Highway Patrolmen shot into a crowd gathered in protest of a segregated bowling alley. Three people died; 27 were injured.

The push for the investigation has complicated life for some lawmakers, who don't want to kill the legislation but fear it could become a starting point to get reparations from the state. That dilemma, some lawmakers quietly grumble, is the governor's fault.

Sanford has said nothing about the apology since making it. Not surprisingly, his staff has said the governor did what he thought was the right thing.

That's an explanation South Carolinians might be hearing often over the next four years.

Contact Brian Hicks at (843) 937-5561 or bhicks@postandcourier.com.