Seen as a conservative wunderkind when he was elected to the U.S. Senate at 36, Rick Santorum is now universally labeled the most endangered incumbent in the 2006 elections, and Democrats are salivating at the prospect of ousting him in November.
 "All the spin in the world can not change the fact that Santorum, an incumbent, should be more worried than any other sitting senator in America today. He has been down double digits for a longtime and voters are very familiar with him and his policies," Washington Post political reporter Jim VandeHei said in a recent online chat. "He has a lot of money to spend, but GOPers are very nervous about the static nature of the polls."
It is a fact that has Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat charged with winning back his party's control of the Senate, brimming with optimism.
"Of all the red states, Pennsylvania is the one that looks the best," the New York Observer quoted Schumer, who helped recruit Bob Casey, a Democrat who opposes gun control and abortion rights, to run against Santorum, as saying.
For his part, Santorum has stressed less his conservative voting record and more his bread-and-butter work to help Pennsylvanians, releasing a list of "Fifty Things You May Not Know About Rick Santorum," including support for AIDS research, expanded colon cancer screening and efforts to prevent gas price gouging.
The Santorum on the campaign trail is a far different politician than the one who took to the Senate more than a decade ago. A hard-charging conservative, he ran for the U.S. House in 1990 against a seven-term moderate Democrat, focusing on social issues, especially his opposition to abortion rights, and gathering an army of volunteers.
The incumbent, Doug Walgren, outspent Santorum nearly three-to-one. Santorum countered by tirelessly knocking on doors and working a grass-roots campaign. He also leveled effective attacks against Walgren for moving his family to Washington.
The campaign worked and Santorum won. But 16 years later, the criticism of Walgren's family situation has come back to haunt now-Senator Santorum. In late 2004, officials in Penn Hills, Pa. asked Santorum to reimburse tax payers some $100,000 they had paid to a cyber charter school for Santorum's five school-age children. They said since his children lived most of the year at their $757,000 house in Virginia rather than a modest $106,000 home next door to his wife Karen's parents, the residents of Penn Hills should not have to pay their tuition.
Santorum quickly removed his children from the charter school and decided to home school them, but observers said the incident hurt him politically.
"He's clearly paying a price for it now in western Pennsylvania," Walgren told The New York Times in July, "because there's a lot of people who remember he was so critical of my having my children in Washington."
Once in the House, Santorum built a strong conservative voting record, but also took a leading role in the "Gang of Seven," which closed the controversial House Bank and exposed the House Post Office scandal, both major black eyes for the Democratic leadership.
By 1994, he was focused on the Senate and a run against Harris Wofford. Wofford, who had defeated former Gov. Dick Thornburgh in a special election in 1991, was a traditional Democrat, focusing on health care access and gun control. Santorum stressed a need to scale back government programs and a socially conservative agenda.
In the Republican revolution of 1994, Santorum narrowly defeated Wofford 49 percent to 47 percent. Despite the closeness of his victory and the more staid tone of the Senate, Santorum continued his brash style, bickering with Senate institution Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia, about a balanced budget amendment to the constitution and calling for the ouster of fellow Republican Mark Hatfield from his committee chairmanship for not supporting the amendment.
Santorum built one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate and angered many Democrats and others with his strident anti-abortion efforts and harsh attacks on opponents.
By 2000, Democrats had Santorum high on their list of Republicans they wanted to defeat. Conservative Democrat Rep. Ron Klink won the primary to take on Santorum. He seemed an ideal candidate, from southwestern Pennsylvania and an opponent to abortion and gun control.
But Klink lacked the resources to truly take on the well-funded Santorum. In the end, Klink spent some $3.6 million on his race, a drop in the bucket compared to Santorum's $10.6 million. Santorum held his seat 52 percent to Klink's 46 percent.
Throughout his 12 years in the Senate, though, colleagues say he has changed. Following his re-election in 2000, he was selected by colleagues to head the Republican Conference, making him the third-ranking Republican in the Senate. As conference chairman, he has stressed the need for party loyalty and unity, supporting President Bush 98 percent of the time.
"Rick might not like my saying this," fellow Pennsylvanian and outspoken moderate, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter said in 2002, "but I think he has moderated a bit over the years."
Moderated or not, Santorum still made public statements that deeply angered Democrats and liberals. In 2003, he reacted to a key Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas law that banned homosexual sex by saying, "If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."
Democrats and some Republicans denounced the comments, but it is this blunt-spoken style that continues to attract supporters in Pennsylvania.
"I support Senator Santorum because he fights for things that matter to me as a Christian," Adam Young of Charleroi, Pa. wrote on the Santorum Web site. "Furthermore, he firmly stands up for what he believes in without worrying about the political consequences. Senator Santorum is a good and decent man who deserves re-election."
In 2006, Santorum faces another conservative Democrat in state Treasurer Bob Casey. What remains to be seen is if his plain-spoken style, his work to garner federal money for Pennsylvania and the some $20 million raised since his last election will be enough to hold off a well-financed Democratic effort.
-- Compiled by Lee Banville for the Online NewsHour
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