Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The Des Moines Register: Six things to know about Rick Santorum

By Erin Kelly, May 27, 2015, USA Today

How much do you know about Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania who is poised to enter the 2016 presidential race Wednesday? Here are six topics to get you started.

Surprise victories

Santorum ran for political office for the first time in 1990 as a long-shot candidate for the U.S. House. He surprised most political observers when he beat seven-term Democratic congressman Doug Walgren. Four years later, at age 36, Santorum won an upset victory for Senate when he beat Democratic senator Harris Wofford. He also beat eventual Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses by a little more than 30 votes.

Controversy

Santorum generated national controversy while a senator in 2003 with comments he made to the Associated Press that appeared to compare same-sex marriage to bestiality and pedophilia. “In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality,” he said in the taped interview. “That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It (marriage) is not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.”


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