Santorum reported $400,000 in director’s fees and stock options as a board member of Universal Health Services, a hospital firm, as well as money from stints with Fox News, Salem Radio, and the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. His current income marks a stark contrast with his last year in the Senate, when he made about $190,000 in salary and book royalties.
Santorum has never registered as a lobbyist, a step that is required only if certain thresholds are met for the amount of time spent and contacts made on behalf of a customer. But even on the campaign trail, he has advocated for his former clients.
In Iowa in July 2010, for example, Santorum touted the importance of Marcellus Shale, a controversial source of natural gas. Just a month earlier, he had ended his three-year consultancy with Consol Energy, which has major hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — operations in the Marcellus Shale fields of Pennsylvania.
“It’s the largest natural gas [field] found in the history of the country, the second-largest natural gas field in the world,” he said. “It’s under Pennsylvania, and we are drilling, baby, drilling.”
Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, an advocacy group, said Santorum “occupied this gray area that’s become very popular for former lawmakers” to avoid having to declare themselves lobbyists. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), another GOP presidential candidate, also has come under fire for his consulting career.
“They provide strategic advice, they use their knowledge to help good-paying corporate clients,” Ellis said. “At some point, it becomes very questionable about whether this is lobbying. . . . If you have national ambitions, you want to avoid the scarlet letter of being a lobbyist.”
Santorum has alternately denied and defended his role in the K Street Project during his time in the Senate, according to news accounts. In 2005, he said the effort was “purely to make sure we have qualified applicants for positions that are in town.” A year later, as his reelection bid was in full swing, he said he had “absolutely nothing to do” with the project or one of its key creators, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist.
“He was one of the central players in the K Street Project; he wasn’t just peripheral,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. “He’s trying to make himself a paragon of moral purity. But he was a huge part of pay-to-play politics during one of the dirtiest eras in Washington.”
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
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