Santorum Campaign in Trouble?
August is the month when GOP candidates who have struggled to gain traction often begin to drop out. The Iowa Straw Poll has frequently been the trigger causing candidates to reconsider.
In 2000 former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander dropped out after a poor showing; former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson ended his bid after finishing in sixth place in 2008; and in 2012 former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty did the same.
There’s no Iowa Straw Poll this cycle, but it seems likely that one or more candidates currently seeking the Republican Party nomination won’t make it to the Iowa caucuses in February. A Politico article this morning suggests former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum may be one of those early dropouts:
Cash-strapped Rick Santorum campaign reshuffles staff
Several top staffers have left Rick Santorum’s campaign to create a new super PAC, a move spurred by the cash-strapped candidate’s anemic fundraising.
Campaign manager Terry Allen, Iowa state coordinator Jon Jones and digital strategist Steve Hilliard — Allen’s son-in-law — departed several weeks ago, leaving the winner of the 2012 Iowa Caucuses without a campaign manager and raising questions about whether Santorum can last until Iowa votes on Feb. 1 next year.
The reshuffling comes on the heels of another key departure — Karen Fesler, a prominent Iowa activist who had been aiding Santorum’s efforts in the state. She now serves as Rick Perry’s Iowa co-chair, the latest of a number of prominent Santorum activists who helped propel him to GOP runner-up status in 2012 but aligned with different candidates in 2016.
The poor fundraising totals in the second quarter, when Santorum brought in around $600,000, seem to be at the root of the departures. Only former New York Gov. George Pataki and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal brought in less than Santorum on the Republican side.
The Santorum campaign’s woes aren’t confined to fundraising, at least judging by additional reporting in the article:
Some of his former staffers and supporters felt Santorum didn’t do enough work in the intervening years to maintain the infrastructure he had in Iowa at the end of the last presidential cycle, leading several to sign up with other campaigns this year.
Earlier this summer, Santorum held an event at which only one person initially showed up, a debacle that generated national headlines and created a perception among some Iowa political hands that things were unraveling (his campaign notes that other events have drawn hundreds of attendees).
“Their schedule doesn’t make sense, there’s no real strategy to it, they’ve gone to towns in Iowa that are practically unincorporated,” said a source familiar with the campaign. “He had…events where one person showed up, which is bad staff work.”
Judging by the quotes of Cody Brown, a senior staffer with Santorum’s Iowa team, the campaign isn’t deterred by its current underdog status. “We’re never going to be the flashy, big dollar campaign – it’s not who Rick is and it’s not who we are,” Brown is quoted saying, adding, “The [campaign] we’re running this cycle doesn’t have fancy data and tech tools, we don’t have the fundraising figures some other campaigns have. Just like we did last time, [the campaign] reflects Rick’s personality. We are a gritty campaign. He’s a shoe leather type of guy.”
Brown makes some good points, and there’s little doubt that Santorum has the sort of drive and determination required to take an underdog campaign to the finish line. The question in 2016, however, is whether what worked in 2012 will work this time around in a very different competitive environment. Santorum’s team seems to be betting it will. If they’re wrong, it’s possible Santorum will be one of the early exits from the 2016 field, if not in August, then fairly soon afterward.