Rick Santorum biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Richard John Santorum was born May 10, 1958, in Winchester, Virginia, the second of three children. His father, Aldo, an immigrant from Italy, is a psychologist, and his mother, Kay, is a nurse. The family was Catholic and attended church regularly, though Santorum later described his parents' religious practice as more dutiful than intense. Both Aldo and Kay worked for the Veterans Administration; Santorum mostly grew up in suburbs outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but graduated from high school in Illinois. He then attended Pennsylvania State University, where he pledged the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity and earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1980. He followed with an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981.

A lifelong Republican, the conservative Santorum volunteered for Senator John Heinz's campaign while still in college and then worked as an administrative assistant to Republican State Senator Doyle Corman while putting himself through law school at Dickinson School of Law. Santorum earned his law degree in 1986 and started practicing law at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, where he met his future wife, Karen Garver Santorum, with whom he would eventually have seven children.

Political Career

In 1990, a 32-year-old Rick Santorum ran for political office for the first time as a long-shot candidate for the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district, representing the Pittsburgh suburbs where he had been raised. To the surprise of political experts, Santorum won the election, knocking seven-term Democratic incumbent Doug Walgren out of office.

Particularly effective in that first campaign were Santorum's charges that Walgren had lost touch with his constituents by spending too much time in Washington and not enough in his district. As a freshman congressman, Santorum became part of the so-called "Gang of Seven" of new GOP lawmakers (as did future Speaker of the House John Boehner). The group made its reputation by fiercely attacking corruption in the Democrat-controlled House, focusing in particular on the House banking scandal and the Congressional Post Office scandal.

Considered a rising star within the Republican Party, Santorum soon sought higher office and won election to the United States Senate in 1994, at the age of just 36, again knocking out a Democratic incumbent, Harris Wofford, in the general election. Six years later, Santorum won reelection to a second term and became chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the third highest-ranking party leadership position in the Senate.