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You are here: Home / 2012 Campaign / Can Santorum Keep His Campaign Small?

Can Santorum Keep His Campaign Small?

March 14, 2012 at 9:15 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico
delves into Rick Santorum’s “decentralized, cause-driven, low-cost
modern campaign” model and “guerrilla approach,” a sharp contrast to Mitt
Romney’s much more organized, professional, and top-heavy operation.

“Santorum
has battled concerns about his field and turnout machinery, suffering
from a series of stumbles that left him without access to the Virginia
ballot and ineligible for some delegates in Ohio. He leans on local
political networks, powered in many cases by grass-roots Christian
conservatives, as a substitute for Mitt Romney’s bulked-up organization.
The campaign maintains the tightest of inner circles, reserving
Santorum’s ear for a small list of longtime aides and supporters.”

“The
fact that the campaign is now playing out across 50 states, rather than
the three early battlegrounds Santorum’s effort was built for, is a
double-edged challenge. On one level, Romney’s structural and financial
advantages loom ever larger as the race moves into places where the GOP
hopefuls cannot run a months-long, hand-shaking, Santorum-style retail
campaign. On the other hand, it means that national-level messaging can
have a disproportionate impact in states like Alabama and
Mississippi…in which no candidate has been able to build up a daunting
organizational edge.”

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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