Campaign ad firm hired Santorum's wife

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- During his past two campaigns, rising Republican star Sen. Rick Santorum paid $10 million to a Pittsburgh advertising firm to help him win office. In the years between the campaigns, the company paid the senator's wife, Karen Santorum - now a full-time mother home-schooling six kids - to work as a consultant, according to campaign finance records and financial disclosure forms.

The senator and the company told United Press International that Karen Santorum's work, conducted from her northern Virginia suburban home, was legitimate labor blessed by the Senate Ethics committee and listed as required on annual Senate financial disclosure statements.

Washington is full of powerbrokers with spouses or family involved in the business of politics or policy. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's wife, Linda, is a top lobbyist for the airline industry. Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's presidential campaign hired his two daughters at salaries that would exceed $100,000 a year.

But a campaign finance law expert said the Santorum-BrabenderCox relationship raises questions.

"You have a situation where clearly there is the potential for an ethics problem and possibly a campaign finance problem," said Larry Noble, former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission and now head of the Center for Responsive Politics, which advocates transparency in campaign finances.

"When you have a spouse being paid by a company that receives money from the senator's campaign, it raises some legitimate questions," Noble said.

Campaign finance law prohibits any conversion of campaign funds for personal use.

In 1995, the Senate Ethics Committee approved Karen Santorum's employment based on Sen. Santorum's description of it. The committee observed in its approval letter that "the compensated employment of spouses is a matter of interest to the public."

The company that hired Karen Santorum is BrabenderCox, a political advertising firm run by GOP media guru John Brabender, credited with helping craft Santorum's 1994 upset win against Sen. Harris Wofford and 2000 defeat of Democratic Rep. Ron Klink.

Federal Election Commission records reviewed by UPI show Santorum's campaign making payments to BrabenderCox totaling nearly $4 million and $6 million in the 1994 and 2000 elections for media work. Most contracts allow political ad firms to keep around 15 percent of the payments.

Santorum's Senate financial disclosure forms show a salary from the company to Karen Santorum in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998, although Senate rules do not require a disclosure of the amount.

In a telephone interview, John Brabender said he paid Karen Santorum around $4,000 a month, mostly for "client development."

"She helped us try to get accounts and often acted as our Washington representative," Brabender said. "She was both a stay-at-home mom and a professional at the same time."

Brabender said his hiring of Karen Santorum had "nothing to do" with Sen. Santorum hiring BrabenderCox.

Karen Santorum is trained both as a lawyer and neonatal nurse. She has also written a book, "Letters to Gabriel," about letters to her son, Gabriel Michael Santorum, who had a fatal birth defect and lived only two hours.

Brabender could not name a client Karen Santorum specifically signed, but said that her job was instead to herd clients Brabender's way. He said she also counseled some clients' wives on becoming productive parts of their husbands' campaigns, including the wife of Illinois Republican state Rep. Al Salvi in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin in 1996. Salvi, now a private attorney in Illinois, did not return a call seeking comment.

Santorum's chief of staff Mike Hershey first said he would not comment on Karen Santorum's salary, referring questions to John Brabender. After Brabender told UPI the figure was $4,000 a month, Santorum spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said office records - which she would not release - show payments that only total $17,781 between 1995 and 1998.

Clayton Wright and Santorum's Chief of Staff Mike Hershey referred UPI to Brabender to confirm their numbers. Brabender did not return phone calls asking him to do so.

The November 1995 letter from the ethics committee says that, "It appears that no rule of the Senate prohibits the employment proposed by your spouse." It says Santorum "asked the committee what Senate rules and ethical considerations are relevant with regard to Ms. Santorum's acceptance of a compensated position with a for-profit company, BrabenderCox, whose business involves campaigns."

Hershey said he does not know if Santorum told the ethics committee that his wife was working for the same company that his campaign hired before the committee wrote its letter. Hershey allowed a reporter to read the ethics letter in Santorum's office, but not copy it. He said it had not been shown before.

The Senate Ethics Committee does not comment on such letters.

Asked in a Senate corridor about his wife's consulting work, Santorum said BrabenderCox "wanted someone who would be here in D.C. and be eyes and ears and begin to network to help them develop a broader client base down here."

"Karen knew them very well having worked with them on the campaigns, and they thought she would be a good person to do that."

The 1994 upset engineered by BrabenderCox reflects Santorum's meteoric rise in American politics. First elected to Congress in 1990 at age 32, Santorum is now the third-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate. He had positioned himself as a possible successor to former Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.

That 1994 win over Wofford was a boon to BrabenderCox also, catapulting it from a small Pittsburgh ad agency to a major GOP political consulting firm with clients like New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and congressional candidates from across the country.

"That was a pretty important race," said Jim Cox, who left the company in 1998. "That race positioned us as a company to all of a sudden have a lot more business coming through the door." The company now has around 80 employees and offices in Pittsburgh and Washington. Santorum and John Brabender are close; the ad man is the godfather of the senator's daughter Sarah Maria.

Jim Cox said he does not recall Karen Santorum working as a consultant, but said, "I'm sure it was on the up-and-up. I'm sure that she did things that legitimately helped the company."