Unimpeachable
ROSS GARBER IS AN EXPERT
AT SAVING ELECTED OFFICIALS
BY MICHAEL Y. PARK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRYCE VICKMARK
In June 2009, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford vanished
without a trace for six days. His closest aides, political allies and
the lieutenant governor were at a complete loss when reporters
asked where the state’s chief executive was. Sanford’s own wife
and four children didn’t know where he was—and Father’s Day
came and went without a call from the staunchly conservative
family man. Legal and political experts began to pose questions
about the constitutional consequences of the unprecedented
situation of an American state whose head of government had
simply disappeared.
Then it got weird.
The day after a spokesman offered the flimsy explanation
that Sanford was hiking the Appalachian Trail, Sanford suddenly
reappeared in South Carolina and convened a hastily assembled
press conference. He had spent the last six days in Argentina with
the mistress he called his soul mate.
And it quickly became even more complicated. He wasn’t going
to resign the governorship. In August, legislators moved swiftly
to establish plans for impeachment—and to many, it looked like a
slam dunk.
“The media focus was so intense that it pushed Michael
Jackson’s death off the front page,” says Kevin Hall, who served
as one of Sanford’s personal lawyers during the fracas. “It was
a political feeding frenzy, and the governor’s political enemies
smelled blood in the water. South Carolina has never seen a
political story like Mark Sanford’s situation.”
But impeachments of sitting governors are a rare event, and
lawyers with experience in such cases are just as rare. Sanford’s
team needed to call in an expert.
They called Ross Garber.
“I have the privilege of getting involved with people and
companies when all hell is breaking loose,” he says with a grin.
Garber was born in southeastern Connecticut, went to the
University of Connecticut for both his undergraduate degree (in
Storrs in 1989) and for law school (in Hartford in 1992). While an
undergrad, he spent a summer in Washington, D.C., interning
for the public defender’s office, then, while in law school, he
interned in Connecticut at a firm that focused on white-collar
criminal defense.
“It wasn’t a business transaction, it was somebody’s liberty or
their life at stake,” he says. “It struck me how it upended their lives.
It affected their marriages, their livelihoods and their psyches, and I
liked that there are lawyers there to help people through it.”
After law school, he spent three years at McKenna & Cuneo
(now McKenna Long & Aldridge) in Washington, D.C., where he did
internal investigative work on defense companies with government
contracts in an era when the evening news still pounced on stories
about bills for $700 toilet seats on military planes. In 2002, he
took a leave of absence to try politics—there was an opening for
a state treasurer in Connecticut, and well-placed political types
thought his background in government accountability would be
a perfect fit after a recent corruption scandal. Garber, for his part,
thought he could bring transparency and checks and balances to
the state pension fund.
The result? “I got the silver medal,” Garber says wryly. (Another
try at politics followed in 2010, when he garnered a respectable
result in a last-minute bid to become the Republican nominee for
Connecticut attorney general.)
Even though Garber lost the state treasurer race, he gained
the attention of higher powers in the state for his reputation for
fairness. Gov. John G. Rowland, just beginning his third term, was
accused of using his office for personal benefit—specifically, using
government contractors to improve his weekend cottage free of
charge. A grand jury had been called to probe the allegations, and
