Rick Santorum capped off his quest to visit to all of Iowa’s 99 counties with a celebration at a park in Lyon County on Tuesday evening, complete with a corn cob bounce house for the kids and free pizza from the local Pizza Ranch.
Lyon County gave the former Pennsylvania Senator his biggest margin of victory in the 2012 Iowa caucuses, winning by 62%. The county, Santorum said, “Stood with us from the very beginning … I’m just coming back to say thank you, Lyon County, for the wonderful support.”
A visit to all 99 counties, dubbed “the full Grassley” after Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who visits every county every year, is an important organizing tactic to candidates looking to get to know voters in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. Santorum is the first 2016 presidential candidate to complete the challenge, his second time personally completing the feat.
Republican Party of Iowa co-chairman Dr. Cody Hoefert told CNN a visit to all 99 counties is “critically important” for candidates.
“It quite often turns out that the candidate that spends the most time, effort, and energy in Iowa tends to get rewarded on caucus night,” Hoefert said.
If that’s true, his efforts have yet to show in the polls. In a recent CNN/ORC poll of likely caucus-goers, Santorum had just 1% of support. In that same poll, 66% of respondents said they were still trying to decide who to support.
This cycle, Santorum faces competition from other social conservatives in the race, including neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the caucuses in 2008.
The former senator defended his standing in the polls to reporters, noting that his 99-county tour has been focused on building out the campaign’s organization at the grassroots level.
“It’s a long, arduous process… People say, ‘Oh, you’re just trying to check a box.’ No, no, no. This is how you win caucuses,” Santorum said.
“You meet people and you connect with folks like we have here in Lyon County, and then you recruit other folks to be your caucus chairs, to recruit other folks to speak for you in the caucuses. All of those things are sort of the nuts and bolts go unseen in a race like this that don’t pay off five months before the election, they pay off five days before the election and on caucus night.”
In his pitch to the 200 or so Iowans assembled, Santorum focused on his record and work in elected office, particularly on social issues.
“Let me assure you if you look at my track record, for 15 or 20 years, I have been standing up and taking the slings and arrows, not just for the right to life, not just on partial birth or things like the Born Alive Protection Act. But for marriage,” said Santorum, who served in the House and Senate from 1995 until 2007.
Asked about the support for outsider candidates during what’s been called the “summer of discontent,” he said, “People are ticked off.”
“They’re understandably saying we just want someone new, somebody that can shake things up and then you’ll hear candidates who for one reason or another are folks that they trust will actually do something different.”
