By Jared Edgerton, Contributing Writer
Rick Santorum’s campaign was dealt a blow Thursday when it failed to make the presidential primary ballot for his home state: Virginia.
The former Pennsylvania Senator was unable to acquire the 10,000 signatures required to compete in the state’s March 6 primary.
Santorum was born in Winchester, Virginia and moved to Butler County, Pa. as a child. He officially changed his residency to Virginia after leaving office.
During Santorum’s unsuccessful 2006 Senate re-election campaign, he was repeatedly criticized for the fact that his children used Pa. tax dollars to pay for a cyber school despite the fact that his family resided mostly in Virginia. It was an especially tough hit since Santorum himself used the residency issue to great effect when he defeated incumbent Rep. Doug Walgren in 1990.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman also missed the threshold in Va.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who also resides in Virginia, was also on the cusp of not meeting the Virginia primary requirements; however, he was able to pay volunteers to collect the final signatures.
Santorum’s poll numbers in Iowa have ticked up, but his campaign has had its share of press troubles in the past two days, too.
Reports surfaced that prior to Bob Vandeer Plaats’ high profile endorsement of the Senator he asked for contributions to launch televisions ads on behalf of Santorum. Vandeer Plaats denied the allegations in a CNN interview saying, “absolutely not.”
In the same interview he explained:
“We would never ask a candidate [for funds] – and by the way, when you endorse Rick Santorum you probably should also know that you’re not asking for $1 million. We would never ask a campaign or a candidate for funds. Especially when you do a personal endorsement.”
After a campaign event in Iowa Santorum clarified Vandeer Plaats’ claims, stating:
“What he talked about was he needed money to promote the endorsement…There was never a direct ask for me to go out and raise money for it.”
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4 Responses
Rick Santorum,
I’am Mack McKee Marketing Director with Daniels Performance Group and Charlie Daniels Racing.I’am also working with Kenny Wallace and the 09 Nationwide car.please have someone contact me to see if we could get some help from him and put him in are house in Washington.this would be ar RIR at Richmond in April.
Ricks a conservative its just no one likes him. Endorsements dont reflect your ideology as much as your voting record.
Santorum lives in Virginia and he couldn’t get the signatures? Of course he lost in 2006 in PA not because he was too conservativ bt because he was oo liberal.
He lost the pro-lifers because of his endorsemnts of Specter, Chagee, and Christine Todd-Whitman. He lost the gun owners when he dissed us.
When the truth is known about Rick he’s not a conservative.
If Gingrich is close to the threshold, he might not survive a petition challenge, which can easily eliminate 10% of the signatures for minor infractions.