Wofford Foe Is Forced on the Defensive : Pennsylvania: GOP’s Santorum, off to a strong start, spends waning days of Senate race explaining his irreverent rhetoric. Election is seen as tossup.

For two months Republican challenger Rick Santorum has been gaining ground on Democratic incumbent Harris Wofford in Pennsylvania’s critical U.S. Senate race by thumbing his nose at the traditional liberalism he claims Wofford represents.

But as the campaign moves into its closing days, with control of the Senate potentially at stake, Santorum has found himself on the defensive, forced to deal with backfires from his own irreverent rhetoric.

Most serious, the two-term GOP congressman from Pittsburgh tripped over the third rail of American politics--Social Security--by suggesting that the retirement age be moved back to 70. Meanwhile other remarks made by Santorum on the campaign trail offended Teresa Heinz, widow of the late Sen. John Heinz, the Republican whose former seat is the prize in this campaign. She publicly denounced the challenger, calling him “the antithesis” of her husband.

“This is a good wake-up call for Pennsylvanians,” crowed Pat Ewing, Wofford’s campaign manager about these developments. “We always knew that once Pennsylvanians saw the true Rick Santorum, they would run for the hills.”

But Mike Mihalke, Santorum’s press secretary, called Wofford’s efforts to capitalize on the Social Security issue a “distortion” and dismissed the significance of Mrs. Heinz’s comments. “I think this election is not going to be determined by how one individual person makes up her mind but about the fact that people are tired of big government and ‘60s liberalism,” Mihalke said.

This bitterly fought contest is one of a handful being waged around the country that will help decide which party rules the Senate for the next two years. The Democrats who now have a 56-44 majority, are in danger of losing half a dozen seats where their incumbents have retired. They can ill afford a defeat here for Wofford, whose victory in a 1991 special election foreshadowed Democratic successes in 1992.

Although a new Philadelphia Daily News/KYW-3 Keystone Poll released Thursday showed Santorum ahead by 10 percentage points, independent analysts said that the Wofford-Santorum competition is too close to call. But some think that Santorum’s loose tongue has given Wofford his best chance yet to focus his campaign and rally his supporters.

“Santorum started off with a crisp message that Wofford was a tax-and-spend liberal who wanted to take America back to the ‘60s,” noted Terry Madonna, Millersville University pollster, whose survey last month showed Santorum, who had been 10 to 15 points behind, dead even with Wofford.

In particular, Santorum has focused on Wofford’s support of national health insurance reform as demonstrating his commitment to big government and big spending. Meanwhile the 36-year-old challenger has presented himself as a moderate.

Wofford tried to depict Santorum as a right-wing extremist. “But he (Wofford) lacked a clearly defined message,” Madonna said.

Santorum then set himself up for trouble two weeks ago in a talk at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Answering a question from a student about the long-term financial future of the Social Security system, Santorum said, according to a transcript provided by the Wofford campaign: “The biggest thing we have to do is to move back the retirement age.” He called the current retirement age of 65 “ridiculous,” and suggested changing it to 70. He explained that he would begin the change with people who are 62 or 63 and add the years on at the rate of one month a year.

But the Wofford campaign omitted that detail from a television commercial it began running last week, which provides a couple of filmed sound bites from Santorum’s remarks and warns: “Rick Santorum says it’s time to change the rules. . . . He wants to delay Social Security until you’re 70.”

In response, Santorum’s campaign said that the candidate’s proposal would not affect current or near-term beneficiaries, a point that he might have emphasized more in his remarks if he had been more cautious. The statement also branded the Wofford commercial “a recklessly false ad.”

But fair or not, the issue appears to be having an impact. Campaigning in Wilkes-Barre this week, Santorum had to field numerous questions on a radio talk show about his remarks. “I have never done anything to jeopardize the Social Security trust fund,” Santorum replied, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Santorum’s problems have been compounded by Mrs. Heinz’s statement. A patron of the arts, an advocate of the environment and a prominent figure in Pennsylvania public life, she had considered running against Wofford herself.

A family spokesman said that Mrs. Heinz, a member of the board supervising the new National Service Corps, was irked by a disparaging remark Santorum made about national service during a debate with Wofford, an enthusiastic proponent of the idea.

“These are old solutions and they don’t work,” Santorum said. “Someone’s going to pick up trash in a park and sing ‘Kumbayah’ around a campfire and you’re going to give them 90% of the benefits of the GI Bill.”

The late senator’s widow more than got even in a lecture delivered last week at the University of Pittsburgh on the current American political scene. She described Santorum as an “unfortunate example” of negative trends in American politics--”a challenger who is short on public service and even shorter on accomplishments . . . overflowing with glib ideology.”

In the midst of the furor, Santorum stuck to his core message. He said in an interview that he regards Wofford’s longtime support of health care proposals--which like the plan put forward by President Clinton would have guaranteed universal coverage and required most employers to pay part of the costs--as the key issue in the campaign.

“People don’t want government-controlled health care,” he said. “He is the most liberal senator we’ve ever had in Pennsylvania” and his health care proposal “is a symbol of what he is.”

As for himself, Santorum pointed to a GOP welfare proposal as the issue that he would like to symbolize his own candidacy. As chairman of a special GOP task force, he helped draft the proposal last year.

Along with establishing a mandatory work requirement for longtime beneficiaries of the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, the plan would have cut benefits to unwed mothers--but only to those under the age of 18 who could live with their parents. That provision contrasts with harsher plans backed by other Republicans that would cut off benefits to all unwed mothers under 21.

The Santorum plan, endorsed by 160 of the 178 House Republicans, also would have allowed states the option of passing legislation that would restore AFDC benefits, another point of disagreement with the conservative plan.