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Santorum denies rumors of involvement in Senate recruiting

Rumors have been swirling this week that former Senator Rick Santorum was the key player in bringing state Senator Jane Orie down to Washington to meet with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and trying to convince her to run against Pat Toomey. Several Republicans have asked me to look into this. Conservatives who back Toomey are convinced that Santorum has an axe to grind and that he’s driving efforts to find an alternative GOP candidate.

Well, I just spoke to Santorum, and he said it’s not true. He wasn’t at the meeting, he said, and didn’t even know it was happening until shortly beforehand.

“I was on vacation that week,” he told me.

At the moment, there’s no evidence I’ve found to refute his statement. I couldn’t reach anyone at the NRSC this morning, and state Republican officials have been extremely reticent to even discuss the meeting, which it increasingly seems was organized by state party chairman Rob Gleason (Santorum said that was the case).

Santorum acknowledged speaking with Orie—”she’s called and asked for advice, but I give advice to a lot of folks,” he said—but he said that’s where it ended.

That being said, there’s clearly a divide over Toomey at the highest levels of the GOP, even if Santorum says he’s not part of it. Theories abound that Santorum isn’t happy with the way Toomey has assumed his old mantle as the conservative movement’s standard-bearer here. The fact that Toomey has in the past, as the Club for Growth head, run conservative candidates against establishment Republicans, doesn’t help.

“The problem Pat Toomey has is that Pat has been out aggressively running candidates across Pennslyvania with the Club for Growth against a lot of Republicans,” Santorum said. “So there are a lot of Republicans … who have a bone to pick with Pat. They’re going to be looking for an alternative.”

But asked point blank if he’s one of those Republicans, Santorum insisted he’s staying out of it.

“I’m not recruiting anybody,” he said. “I’m squarely on the sidelines.”

Santorum frames the divide as existing within only the smallest number of Republicans. And he thinks we in the media are, of course, fueling it.

“The media has tried to convince everyone that a conservative can’t win in Pennsylvania,” he said. “I think I showed everyone that in fact they can.”

Regardless, the time for another viable Republican candidate to emerge and seriously challenge Toomey is running out—and fast.

July 14, 2009 at 12:42 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Jane Orie, Pat Toomey, Rick Santorum

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