Santorum’s Finances Draw Questions

American Prospect

: Santorum’s exurban lifestyle is financed in ways that aren’t available to the average voter back home in Pennsylvania — namely a political action committee that lists payments for such unorthodox items as dozens of trips to the Starbucks in Leesburg, a number of stops at fast-food joints, and purchases at Target, Wal-Mart, and a Giant supermarket in northern Virginia. Although a Santorum aide defends those charges as legitimate political costs, good-government experts say the expenditures are at best unconventional, and at worst a possible violation of Senate rules, and the purchases appear to be unorthodox when compared with other senators’ filings. Santorum’s PAC — a “leadership PAC,” whose purpose is to dispense money to other Republican candidates — used just 18.1 percent of its money to that end over a recent five-year period, a lower number than other leadership PACs of top senators from both parties.

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