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Santorum occupies big stage as underdog
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Back in 1990, Rick Santorum was wearing out a pair of Nikes knocking on doors, a long-shot candidate to snag a congressional seat in suburban Pittsburgh.
This was an era when incumbents seemed invulnerable. Two years before, 98 percent of the U.S. representatives who sought re-election were returned to office.
But change was in the air. Mr. Santorum, then 32, told me that summer about a woman in Ross asking him three questions when he knocked on her door: Are you an incumbent? Have you ever run for office before? Have you ever held any other office?
When the young Republican answered no to all three questions, she told him, "You've got my vote. Leave."
I reached Mr. Santorum on his cell phone Wednesday as he was riding an Amtrak train from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. He was in a familiar spot, again a long shot for election, this time seeking the Republican nomination for president.
When he won the congressional race in 1990, he recalled, The Wall Street Journal called the National Republican Congressional Committee on election night for comment, "and nobody there knew my name."
"That's sort of how I feel now," he said. "The general consensus is, 'He got creamed in his last race [against current U.S. Sen. Bob Casey] and therefore he's not a viable candidate.'
"I'm sort of used to being discounted and ignored and underestimated."
Mr. Santorum's win in 1990 over Democratic U.S. Rep. Doug Walgren was the first in a series of upset victories. He was re-elected to Congress in 1992 despite being redistricted into a Mon Valley constituency designed to stop him. Two years later, he upset U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford. Mr. Santorum would serve two terms in the Senate, but his trouncing by Mr. Casey in 2006 makes him an outsider again.
Political strategist John Brabender, who has worked on all of Mr. Santorum's campaigns, said this feels more like the first race than any of the ones that followed. Back then, Mr. Brabender said, they were underfunded and "sort of making it up as we went along."
It's like that now, he said, only instead of knocking on thousands of doors Mr. Santorum is "knocking on states."
He has visited Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina roughly 15 times each since early in 2010. Those three states' early caucuses and primaries can make or break a presidential candidate and, unlike the woman at the door in Ross, they're filled with tough questions. It's part of the genetic makeup of folks in Iowa and New Hampshire to grill presidential candidates.
"They want to test your mettle and they want to see you more than once," Mr. Santorum said.
He had to break off his conversation with me to do a radio interview with "The G. Gordon Liddy Show," but he soon called back. Mr. Santorum isn't getting much press, and he said he'd just gotten on syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer for leaving him entirely out of consideration as a potential Republican nominee.
"I told him, 'Charles, where's the love, buddy?' "
Mr. Brabender said that being free of political office allows Mr. Santorum "to say what he really believes," but Mr. Santorum pointed out it also means he has no political structure in place and no salary, which is no small problem for a father of seven.
It may feel like 1990, but talk radio, cable talk and the Internet have changed the political landscape. What has come to be called "Santorum's Google problem," in which web searches of his name turn up a foul term that doesn't pass this newspaper's breakfast test, is the most striking example.
"It's a free country and people can do and say what they want to say," Mr. Santorum said, but he sees a double standard that allows the left to get away with distasteful tactics the right never could.
Is Rick Santorum a viable presidential candidate? Hey, in 1990 I didn't think this guy could win a congressional seat. But he claimed to have knocked on 20,000 doors in the old district that stretched from West Elizabeth to Findlay, and he won the election by about 5,000 votes.
Few seem to believe in his chances this year either, so don't count him out.
First Published May 12, 2011 12:00 am
