Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum is co-chair of BPC’s Task Force on Paid Family Leave. He served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007, and was the Senate’s third-ranking Republican. In 2012 and 2016, Santorum was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. His grassroots approach to campaigning—including visiting every one of Iowa’s 99 counties and his victory in the Iowa caucuses—catapulted him to frontrunner status where he ultimately won 11 states and nearly 4 million votes during the 2012 Republican primary process. In 2012, Santorum and his wife, Karen, also co-founded Patriot Voices, a grassroots and online community of Americans dedicated to finding ways to restore the American Dream for hardworking families. Santorum served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995, where he was known as a successful government reformer. He was a member of the “Gang of Seven” that exposed the House banking and Congressional Post Office scandals in the early 1990s. He was also an author and floor manager of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and was the author of legislation that outlawed the procedure known as partial birth abortion, as well as the “Born Alive Infants Protection Act,” the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act,” and the “Combating Autism Act.”