2012 GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum When Rick Santorum suddenly surged in the polls in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses, his rising popularity owed in part to a last-minute super-PAC ad buy that helped get his mug on the airwaves. But Santorum also got another boost from one of his anti-gay allies, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which hammered one of the ex-senator's main rivals—Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian from Texas.
Now the group is angling for a replay in New Hampshire, where it has already been waging a contentious battle to repeal the state's popular same-sex marriage law. (The state Legislature could vote on whether to repeal the law any day now.) NOM announced Monday that it plans to run a $50,000 independent-expenditure campaign against Paul in the hours before the crucial Tuesday primary. The group started running TV ads online on Friday and calling voters across the state to fill them in on Paul's failure to adequately oppose gay marriage.
NOM has tried this strategy before, in advance of last week's Iowa caucuses. Paul was rising in the Iowa polls until mid-December, when he became the subject of a major negative TV ad campaign paid for by NOM. Starting on December 28, the group spent about $80,000 on ads hammering Paul for being the only major GOP presidential candidate who had failed to sign its pledge to oppose same-sex marriage. It also launched a website called wrongonmarriage.com, which highlighted Paul's past statements opposing a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, as well his comments supporting the right of gays to marry.
NOM's ad campaign may have been a key part of Santorum's success. To the evangelical activists who dominate the Iowa caucuses, gay marriage is a line-in-the-sand issue. Paul clearly didn't pass the litmus test: Despite his claims of being personally opposed to homosexuality, he believes the states should have the right to make same-sex marriage legal. NOM made sure voters knew about that.
Whether NOM's New Hampshire effort will benefit Santorum as much as it did in Iowa is an open question. New Hampshire's GOP primary voters are far less socially conservative than those in Iowa. Granite State voters have booed Santorum for his gay-marriage views, and Paul is running much farther ahead in the polls there than Santorum. Still, NOM's attack on Paul certainly can't hurt Santorum, whose campaign has still remained badly underfunded compared with his competitors.
Santorum has a long history with NOM, the group behind ballot initiatives across the country attempting to ban gay marriage, including California's Proposition 8 measure. One of NOM's staunchest supporters, Santorum has frequently fundraised for the group in the past. (Santorum and group's president, Brian Brown, also reportedly attend the same Catholic church in Virginia.)
NOM board member Neil Corkery was a loyal Santorum campaign donor when he was in Congress. And when Santorum was gearing up to run for president in the summer of 2010, NOM helped introduce him to voters in the critical state of Iowa. That year, Santorum headlined NOM's "Judge Bus" tour, traveling the state in a successful effort to persuade Iowa voters to eject three state supreme court justices who in 2009 overturned a state ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional. (All three judges lost the election.)
It's no surprise, then, that NOM was pleased with the outcome of the Iowa caucuses. While the nonprofit group's tax-exempt status prevents it from explicitly endorsing a candidate, Maggie Gallagher, the group's cofounder, gushed on NOM's blog that Santorum was a "Catholic hero." Following his speech on Tuesday, she wrote:
Rick Santorum gave a magnificent speech tonight. It was an expression, a flowering in a way I do not think America has seen in my lifetime of Catholic culture. He made his economic message more than a question of self-interest—he made it a moral cause. He connected the dignity of every human life, with the dignity not only of work, but every human being who is made in the image of his Creator to be a creator—a worker, and not just a consumer.
God bless him, God bless him. This is a serious fight.
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