Rick Santorum's slow build: campaigning 'has a way of weeding out candidates'
|
Version 0 of 1. Rick Santorum spent the summer of 2011 crisscrossing Iowa, meeting handfuls of voters. For a long time he was mired at the bottom of the polls in the Republican primary, but his hard work paid off. The former Pennsylvania senator, an ardent social conservative, won Iowa and 10 other states in the race for the presidential nomination, finishing second to Mitt Romney. Related: Rick Santorum announces second run for Republican presidential nomination A second-place finish is normally a springboard to frontrunner status in the GOP primaries next time round. But this summer, Santorum is doing the same thing, with the same low fundraising numbers and threadbare campaign. The difference is that instead of being driven in the passenger seat of a pickup truck owned by a campaign aide, Santorum is travelling from town to town in a two-SUV caravan, driven by young staffers equipped with earpieces. Santorum’s campaign is relatively informal. Recently, he went into the back of Misty’s Malt Shop in Keosauqua, Iowa, and made a milkshake for the Guardian. Not long afterwards, he could be spotted in Des Moines airport, alone, before flying back to his northern Virginia home. In an interview with the Guardian, Santorum sounded relatively confident about his prospects despite having lower fundraising numbers in the last quarter than all but two other serious Republican candidates. In his opinion, “the most important thing is getting to the finish line and, for me, the best way to get the finish line is to get to the start line”. He said he was confident his campaign had “the money we need to do what we want to do” and was “way ahead of where we were four years ago”. Santorum also seemed to be taking a strategic decision to de-emphasize fundraising. “I don’t spend all my time raising money,” he said. “Most candidates are not now doing seven or eight town hall meetings a day, they are spending most of their time on the phone, going to fundraisers, doing those things. “That’s the way they want to run their campaign and they can have nice reports which show lots of money. I’ll show lots of caucus captains and lots of volunteers and impressions that while people may not say ‘I’m for you now’ [they might say] ‘You’re on my list and I might find myself supporting you on caucus night.’” Santorum has also differentiated himself from other candidates with a relatively low-key approach at campaign events and at larger gatherings such as the Family Leadership Summit, a GOP presidential cattle call held in Ames, Iowa, last weekend. While others went for applause lines, Santorum consistently pushed his message of “blue-collar conservatism”. At every campaign stop, Santorum asked how many working-age Americans didn’t have college degrees. He would get a guess or two and then give the answer: “74%”. The economically heterodox candidate, who opposes the TPP free trade agreement and favors the renewal of the Export-Import Bank, then talked about his plans to revive manufacturing in the US and the importance of using the tax code to incentivize two-parent families. Santorum’s skepticism towards free trade strikes a unique tone in the GOP field. At a business roundtable in Fairfield, Iowa, he argued: “A level playing field is not just domestic tax policy, because manufacturers in Iowa, by and large, don’t compete against manufacturers in Wisconsin, they compete against manufacturers in Mexico and China.” Instead, he expressed his support for “a level global playing field”. I’ve always been the candidate who tries to have that slow steady build and build off of that foundation Unlike some Republican rivals, Santorum made a point of not mentioning the campaign’s insurgent force, the real-estate mogul Donald Trump, by name. Instead, in an interview which took place before Trump’s controversial remarks about John McCain, he simply noted that in the past two election cycles, “almost everyone that’s gone up has come down”. The former Pennsylvania senator said: “Every candidate could surprise me and go up and never come down and be the candidate that can run wire to wire. But this process has a way of weeding out candidates.” He added: “I’ve always been the candidate who tries to have that slow steady build and build off of that foundation.” That approach was displayed as Santorum went from voter to voter to voter. In the small town of Keosauqua, Santorum walked the block and a half from the malt shop to the bar and restaurant where he was holding an event. On the way, he stopped at every business to shake hands. “Hi, I’m Rick Santorum and I’m running for president,” he said. A waitress, eating lunch alone at the pizzeria, was unimpressed. A teller asked what he would do to help community banks. Santorum seemed excited to share his desire to repeal Dodd-Frank. Of course, there were Iowans who didn’t recognize the candidate but, upon hearing he was running for president, wanted to take selfies. At the end of the walk, Santorum arrived at his event. In a town of just over 1,000, there were seven people waiting. This approach has some real benefits. The Guardian talked to two voters who said they were considering Bernie Sanders and Santorum, having talked to the latter. Related: Rick Santorum heralds role as 'blue collar conservative' in Iowa One, Tai Ward, a fantasy sports software developer from Fairfield, said Santorum piqued his interest when he said he was a fantasy sports fan as well. Ward, who caucused for the libertarian Ron Paul in 2012, said he liked candidates who stood up to corporations and seemed genuine, a description he felt applied to Santorum. He didn’t agree with Santorum on everything, but appreciated that he seemed like “he believed everything he says”. The key for Santorum is whether he can successfully woo voters one on one in small towns over the next six months. The defending champion of the Iowa caucuses was in eighth place in the most recent poll of the Hawkeye State and he is doing even worse nationally, in danger of not qualifying for the first GOP debate, on 6 August. He told the Guardian his campaign “was better positioned from the standpoint of being able to take this race beyond Iowa” than it was at the same time four years ago. But as in that campaign, he must hope that Republicans polling ahead of him flame out and give him, the slow and steady candidate, an opportunity to pull ahead. |