On my first day of work at the Philadelphia Inquirer, in September 1995, an editor handed me a news release and told me to cover a press conference. I was new in town and had never heard of the guy whose name was at the top: Rick Santorum. He’d been elected the previous year to represent Pennsylvania in the United States Senate.
My story in the next day’s paper began this way: “Sen. Rick Santorum threw a news conference yesterday, but there was one hitch: He forgot to tell the host.’’
I’ve thought of that story often in the past few months, as Santorum campaigns in the Republican presidential primary and inches his way up in the polls.
If the main rap against Mitt Romney is that he’s a closet moderate who has flip-flopped on social issues, Santorum is still singing the same old song, at least the one he was singing the day I met him.
The press conference was held at a shelter for homeless mothers and children in West Philadelphia. I called to confirm some details and was told by the dumbfounded director that there certainly was no press conference happening there.
When I read to her from the news release, she said that the senator was simply due to stop by and meet privately - privately - with staffers and a mother on welfare.
“We generally don’t do press conferences here on behalf of politicians,’’ the director explained and then lobbed my question back to me: “What’s the press conference about?’’
We were soon to find out. Santorum swept into the shelter and, as I wrote, “patted his red power tie, fastened his middle jacket button, stuck his hands in his pockets and addressed the TV cameras. Homeless women and children who live in the temporary shelter had been shooed out of the lobby.’’
But as she left, one of the women had a message to relay to the senator: “I’m all for reform, but I don’t understand all the cuts he wants to make. We need affordable housing and day care.’’
Santorum, then 37, had consistently voted to curb welfare benefits, including to eliminate aid when mothers on welfare have more children and to deny checks to unwed teenage mothers. He had also opposed $11 billion in federal funding for state child-care efforts.
It is the same anti-entitlement, smaller government message he is delivering on the stump today. You can accuse him of being stingy with poor folks, but you can’t accuse him of flip-flopping.
Back in 1995, Santorum said he had stopped in at the shelter to “see how we’re doing, to see if the things we have put in the [welfare reform] bill are working.’’ He went on to say that family and friends - not the government - should provide day care.