Rick Santorum is back on familiar ground, seeking redemption and a lifeline for his presidential candidacy in the state that rejected him almost six years ago.
The former senator from Pennsylvania has resurrected his career after a shattering 2006 reelection defeat. Dismissed as a hopeless long shot when his presidential run began, he'll finish no worse than second for the Republican nomination. At 53, he's one of the nation's leading social conservatives, and his long-range future has never looked brighter.
But as he resumes a do-or-die Pennsylvania primary effort this week, he'll need all his local connections and considerable campaign talents to survive what could be the final showdown of the 2012 GOP contest. Polls show him with a small lead over Mitt Romney, who'd like nothing more than to finish off his main rival in the April 24 election.
After a day spent traversing the state's steeply eroded ridges, studded with redbud blossoms and trees just greening up, Santorum expressed satisfaction at returning to "familiar territory, where I can say, 'No, no, there's a shorter way to get there' to the drivers."
He's all but said that a primary loss would end his candidacy. "We have to win here," he told reporters during a stop at Bob's Diner in Carnegie, a Pittsburgh suburb he represented as a young congressman in the early 1990s.
Romney's nonstop attack ads have erased Santorum's initial advantage in some previous primaries, particularly in the larger, more diverse states that closely resemble Pennsylvania, with plenty of moderate suburban voters and fewer evangelical Christians. But Santorum said that "people in Pennsylvania know me. All of the negative attacks, I think, are going to fall on a lot of deaf ears here."
Home-state familiarity also cuts against him. His warts are widely known, and success elsewhere hasn't altered his complicated relationship with state politicians — relatively few actively support him — and with ordinary Republican voters.
"There are people here who like him and people here who hate him," said Barth Levy, a 54-year-old architect from Zelienople, who attended a Santorum rally in Mars. "I've been impressed by his ability to soldier on. He's far surpassed any expectations anybody had." The Santorum fan also acknowledged that the GOP race "is kind of over."
Yet growing calls for his surrender seem to have stiffened Santorum's determination to risk a second straight home-state defeat. There was a sharp edge to his voice when he complained to reporters at a bowling alley in Mechanicsburg that he'd been asked "every five minutes, 'When are you going to get out of the race?' for the last week."
His stubborn streak contributed to the 2006 general election defeat by more than 17 percentage points, one of the worst losses in decades for a Senate incumbent anywhere in the country. Even supporters say that he would have fared better if he hadn't come across as arrogant and overly combative.
Santorum's prickly personality is well-known in western Pennsylvania, where he grew up on the Department of Veterans Affairs' 88-acre campus in working-class Butler — his father was a psychologist, his mother a nurse — and began his rise in politics.