Caroline Santorum has never voted.
But come Saturday, she’ll be pulling the lever for her uncle, a man she describes as “a great role model.”
Her uncle, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, has led a campaign built on traditional socially conservative values. Its fundamental cornerstones, as the candidate has repeated at countless stump speeches and debates, are faith and family.
And Caroline, his niece and goddaughter, sits right at their crossroads.
“Everything he stands for and believes in is from the heart, and he’s really passionate about everything he says and does,” the first-year psychology student said Wednesday afternoon. “He’s really steadfast in what he believes in. I see that and ... really try to incorporate it through my life and everything I do.”
In that sense, she and her uncle keep largely in line with the rest of their clan.
“Just the Santorum family in general, we’re devout Catholics,” Caroline Santorum said. “We go to church every Sunday, [and] I taught Sunday school all through high school. I’ve just tried to embody my religion.”
But family, too, has weighed heavily on Sen. Santorum.
His family resides in Virginia but travels in the summer to vacation and visit relatives, including Caroline.
She recalled playing board games like Monopoly and Pictionary at family reunions (“He’s really good, especially when you’re young and you don’t really understand it,” she said.)
The senator also has a family with seven children of his own, so “this is not really an opportune time to run for president,” Caroline Santorum said.
But she takes that to mean that her uncle is deeply passionate for this run: “This isn’t something he just did to be powerful. He does it because he thinks it’s what’s right and what he needs to do for his country.”
That’s a passion she’s seen run through her uncle’s political career, which stretches back to 1990.
“He’s a really upstanding guy, really passionate [and] speaks from the heart,” she said. “He’s never run as a Democrat when it’s popular and then gone back to being a Republican.”
Similarly, her family’s interaction with their “Uncle Rick’s” political career and the relative notoriety that’s come with it stretches back as long as the younger Santorum can remember.
She recalled the inauguration of former President George W. Bush and the surreality of seeing her uncle sitting behind him.
“I remember sitting with my mom and dad and oldest cousin Elizabeth,” she said, when she noticed her uncle’s face on a big screen showing Bush’s address: “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ and my dad said, ‘Look at that; that could be an omen.’ And so many years later, I guess it could be.”
But that attention can also be trying.
“Criticism is hard,” she said. “Nobody wants to hear anybody talking bad about your family, especially on a national level. It’s difficult, but you have to take the good with the bad in politics.”
And as election day approaches, Caroline Santorum would rather focus on the good.
“I just think that my uncle is always going to do the right thing,” she said. “He doesn’t wander in what he believes; he’s always been a strong conservative ... [and] you’ll never question if he’ll do the right thing.”