Santorum made millions after the Senate
Rick Santorum's exit from the Senate in 2006 was a bruising defeat: he lost by 17 points. But his financial disclosure form shows that Santorum was cashing in on his Washington connections within a year.
Just two months after losing his seat, Santorum signed a contract with the Ethics and Public Policy Center which paid him $217,385 to be a "senior fellow." A month later he signed a lucrative deal with Fox News for $239,153. Two months later he signed up as a member of the board of directors for United Health Services based out of his homestate of Pennsylvania for stock options and director's fees worth over $395,000 a year. All those figures are based on his financial disclosure forms filed by his presidential campaign last year.
Santorum didn't have to look too far for more contracts. In July of 2007 he signed a deal with a former donor to his campaign, Pennsylvania-based Consol Energy. The company hired Santorum to consult and by 2011 was paying him $142,500. Employees at Consol and the company's political action committee gave over $58,000 in campaign contributions to Santorum's failed 2006 Senate campaign according to Federal Election Committee (FEC) records reviewed by CBS News.
Santorum never registered as a lobbyist for any of these clients but served as a consultant.
"What's clear from this is you don't have to be a lobbyist by the common definition to do very, very well for yourself coming out of congress," said congressional scholar Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "No matter what, you have to raise your eyebrows over this stuff."
A month after Santorum signed the Consol contract he and his family upgraded their home from their $850,000 house in Leesburg, Virginia and bought a $2 million home in Great Falls, one of northern Virginia's most exclusive zipcodes.
On Santorum's 2011 filing he indicated he's still working for the Washington lobbying firm American Continental Group by providing consulting to a Jacksonville, Florida, company Fortegra Financial for $65,000. Three Fortegra employees donated to Santorum's presidential campaign this past June according to FEC records.
Santorum also indicates he's still working for the Clapham Group which according to its website "consults clients working to address modern-day injustices and promote the common good." Santorum signed up with Clapham in October, 2010, for $125,000.
In fact, by the time Santorum filed his presidential candidate financial disclosure in August of 2011, his income had gone from at least $226,000 in 2005 to at least $1.3 million in 2011.
The Santorum campaign did not respond to a request for comment.