A House is not a Home

When there's no one there . . .

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Maybe he's just remodeling his Penn Hills home. That would explain why PA Senator Rick Santorum's "house" in Pennsylvania is empty.

According to KDKA news (via Eschaton) in Pittsburgh, Patrols Beefed Up Near Santorum's Home:

Rick Santorum's residency in the area and, in fact, his residency in Pennsylvania, has become an issue in this still young U.S. Senate campaign.

KDKA’s Ralph Iannotti reports Santorum’s residency is no longer just only a political issue... it's now become a police matter, as well.

“He doesn't live here,” said Ed Vecchio of Penn Hills. “The house he's registered to vote out of, is vacant -- no curtains, furniture, nothing in there. It's abandoned for over a month. So, I feel it's my right to contest his vote.”

Those comments from the husband of the head of the Penn Hills Democratic Party led police to beef up patrols around the home of U.S. Senator Rick Santorum.

The increased police presence began late Tuesday, after authorities in Washington D.C. contacted Penn Hills authorities.

U.S. Capitol Police received a complaint from Karen Santorum.

She was worried that someone was trespassing or prowling on their Penn Hills property.

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Machesky said the beefed up security around Santorum's house does not detract from police service to the rest of Penn Hills.

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Right now, Penn Hills Police don't know who, if anybody, trespassed on Santorum's property.

No one has been charged.

As for the Santorums, they think someone would have had to go onto their property to know what is, or isn't inside.

Now things aren't all bad for Santorum. He's not homeless. He does, of course, have a second home in Virginia, pictured above.

Will Bunch of the Philly Daily News (and Attytood), wrote a piece in Mother Jones, Sanctus Santorum, noting that "many people here don’t think of Santorum as a resident. In 2001, as he began his second term, the senator bought a fortress- like house, recently assessed at $777,500, in Leesburg, Virginia, an affluent exurb of Washington, D.C.; he also owns a small home in Penn Hills, where a relative of his lives. People here rarely see Santorum, who voted by absentee ballot in 14 of the past 21 elections and didn’t seem troubled by the arrangement until it came out last fall that the local school district had paid at least $34,000 to educate five of the senator’s children in Virginia through online coursework."

Bunch obviously enjoys the subject of Santorum. He penned another article a few months ago about Santorum in the American Prospect, With A Little Help From His Friends, in which he recalls:

When Santorum first ran against incumbent House Democrat Doug Walgren in 1990, he released an attack ad that drew the attention of Roll Call, the Capitol Hill weekly: “Strange music plays while a picture of an attractive white house is shown. The announcer says, ‘There’s something strange about this house.’ The reason is because Walgren lives in McLean, which is ‘the wealthiest area of Virginia’ rather than his suburban district. ‘Maybe that’s why he voted for a pay raise seven times,’ the announcer argues.”

But in 1995, just after winning election to the Senate (and thus five years before he would have to face Pennsylvania voters again), the couple purchased a $292,000 house in Herndon, Virginia. “I made the pledge that I would live in my district as a congressman, and I did,” Santorum said at the time. “The Senate is a very different place from the House.” For two years he didn’t even own a home in Pennsylvania, but in 1997 bought a small house in Penn Hills -- in the Pittsburgh area, next door to his wife’s parents -- for $87,800.

See also: Media Matters, which noted that Santorum referred to his opponent as a "carpetbagger" for living outside the district, and that:

During his 1990 congressional campaign, Santorum "unseated Democratic Rep. Doug Walgren after running attack ads criticizing Walgren for buying a house and raising his three children in McLean, Va."

Now some people might call that hypocritical. I, on the other hand, would say it's just Santimonious Santorum Speak.

(Photo via Attytood). For more Santorum, see Tricky Ricky.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Attytood has a post on this latest Santorum empty nest story, including a picture of the Penn Hills digs. Check it out here: Overreacting?. Bunch also reports on the accusation by the Santorum camp that Bob Casey is behind this whole episode.

Two thoughts on that. He's behind what -- you might ask? Making an issue of the fact that the house is empty? Sounds like more Santimonious Santorum Speak to me. Also, calling a democrat who happened to raise the issue a Casey operative may be overreaching just a bit. Maybe Santorum has been away from Pennsylvania too long. Scranton (Casey's hometown) is about as far from Penn Hills/Pittsburgh as you can get. I should know. I'm from Scranton and lived in Pittsburgh for many years, so I made that trek on many occasions.

Tags: PA politics, Santorum