Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has announced he is running for president. He also ran for the Republican nomination in 2012, but he lost to Mitt Romney. He placed a surprising second in the race given that he was an after-thought for a majority of the early campaign.
Santorum made the announcement Wednesday. The announcement came from a rally in Cabot, Pennsylvania. The small blue-collar town is outside of Pittsburgh.
“As middle America is hollowing out, we can’t sit idly by as big government politicians make it harder for our workers and then turn around and blame them for losing jobs overseas. American families don’t need another president tied to big government or big money,” declared Santorum.
In 2012, Santorum took a surprising win in the Iowa caucus. This was attributed most likely to the Christian Evangelical vote. That win sent Santorum and his campaign soaring and he won several more states, continuing the momentum. Santorum eventually withdrew from the race, calling for party unity. The sweater vests that Santorum wore on the campaign trail also went viral, even leading to Twitter accounts for the sweater vest.
Santorum’s new campaign will revolve around blue-collar workers. He has been openly vocal about his views that the Republican Party must be the party for workers, not just business. He has argued in the past for minimum wage increases, saying they help lower class workers. He is set to visit Davenport, Iowa, Thursday.
Santorum was previously a Senator from Pennsylvania. He was defeated for re-election by Bob Casey in 2006 in the largest margin-of-victory ever for a Democrat Senate candidate in Pennsylvania and the largest margin-of-victory in the 2006 Senate elections for a challenger.