Richard John Santorum Sr. was born on May 10, 1958, and is an American politician, attorney, author, and political commentator. He represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2007, serving as the Senate's third-ranking Republican during his final six years in office.
Santorum was first elected to the United States Senate in 1994, and he served two terms until his loss in the 2006 reelection bid. As a Roman Catholic, he is a social conservative who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, and he adopted a cultural warrior image during his Senate tenure.
During his time in the Senate, Santorum authored the Santorum Amendment, which aimed to promote the teaching of intelligent design, and he was a leading sponsor of the 2003 federal law known as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
After leaving the Senate, Santorum worked as a consultant, private practice lawyer, and news contributor. He ran for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, exceeding expectations by winning 11 primaries and caucuses and receiving nearly four million votes before suspending his campaign in April 2012.
Santorum ran for president again in 2016, but ended his campaign in February 2016 after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. In January 2017, he became a CNN senior political commentator, but was terminated from his contract in May 2021 due to comments he made about Native Americans a few weeks prior, which were deemed "dismissive".
