Santorum woos Nevada

Former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, defeated for reelection in 2006 by a 41 to 59 percent landslide, was in Nevada last week trolling for support for his nascent presidential campaign.

He called Nevada’s caucuses particularly important to his campaign, though he made a dozen trips each to three other early states in the presidential lineup—Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina—before his first trip to Nevada. On Jan. 17 this year, while campaigning in South Carolina, Santorum promised to help that early presidential primary state in its efforts to dump its nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. South Carolina has seven nuclear power reactors at four sites.

Santorum’s record has something to offend almost everyone in Nevada.

As Nevada officials are hoping for greater federal assistance for its budding renewable energy industry in this recession, Santorum talked up coal and attacked U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada for his opposition to coal.

For Latinos—more than a fourth of Nevada’s population—Santorum’s last U.S. Senate campaign offers inspiration. He made attacks on illegal immigrants and demands for English as the official U.S. language a centerpiece of his candidacy.

Nevada is a Mecca for senior citizens, with growth in over-60s four times the national average. Santorum is a supporter of “privatizing” Social Security and would raise the retirement age to 70—or higher.

For abortion supporters—63 percent of Nevadans voted in 1990 in favor of abortion rights—Santorum is opposed and has said the “right to privacy … doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution.” He has also claimed that the number of abortions being performed means not enough children are being born to support Social Security.

As a U.S. senator, Santorum supported dumping other states’ nuclear waste in Nevada. That position has not changed since he left the Senate.

Gay Nevadans are becoming a more important group of campaign contributors. Santorum has equated homosexuality to adultery, child molestation, incest, polygamy, sodomy and bestiality. He has suggested that the young victims of Catholic priests were willing participants rather than victims, calling such a relationship “a basic homosexual relationship.”

In a 2009 interview with Las Vegas columnist Jon Ralston, Doug Hampton—husband of U.S. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada’s mistress—claimed that Santorum had tipped Ensign off that Hampton was about to go public with the news of the illicit affair, prompting Ensign to disclose it first. Santorum did not comment.

In a Heritage Foundation lecture, Santorum once said, “My colleague Senator John Ensign of Nevada told me a story that epitomizes the selfishness of our culture: ‘When I was a teenager, I had a sticker in my car with a picture of a bear scratching himself on the tree, and under it was the saying, ‘If it feels good, do it!’ That was the motto of the ’60s and the ’70s, and certainly it is the motto today. The image of the bear scratching himself highlights a view of human beings as animals, and that people should do what pleases them at the moment without a thought to the broader long-term consequences of their actions.”