Santorum to visit 99th county Tuesday

WAUKEE - Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum plans to be the first 2016 presidential candidate to complete a 'full Grassley” in visiting all 99 Iowa counties when he campaigns tonight in the Lyon County town of Rock Rapids.

Santorum is trailing in the polls, as he was four years ago when he made the same statewide trek to each Iowa county that Grassley and Gov. Terry Branstad complete annually.

That effort in 2011 led him to a surprise victory over GOP front-runner Mitt Romney in the 2012 GOP caucuses. Romney went on to win the Republican presidential nomination.

Santorum said his commitment to Iowa voters has him two months ahead of his victorious pace of four years ago.

'The reason we chose Lyon County for the place to finish up was that four years ago Lyon County gave me my highest percentage of the vote. They gave 63 percent,” Santorum said during a Monday appearance on a

Des Moines talk-radio show. 'We wanted to say thank you very much to Lyon County in the far northwest corner of the state of Iowa.”