Rick Santorum

IOWA — Four years ago, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum won the Republican caucuses in Iowa.

Monday night he finished last in the 11 candidate field with 1 percent of the vote and no delegates to the national GOP convention.

Santorum, who spent his youth in Butler, announced his presidential campaign on May 27, 2015, at Penn United Technologies’ plant in Jefferson Township.

In October Santorum adviser Matt Beynon said the campaign would focus heavily on Iowa because of Santorum’s victory there four years ago.

In 2012, Santorum claimed a slim victory in the Iowa caucuses, the first voting in the presidential race, by 34 votes over eventual GOP nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Santorum went on to win 11 primaries before suspending his campaign that April.

However, this year Santorum has drawn little support.

In October he was polling at 2 percent, putting him near the bottom of what was then a 15-candidate contest. Since then the former senator’s numbers have stagnated and most polling put him closer to 1 percent in late January.

Santorum reportedly is re-evaluating his campaign.

He was a senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007, and a House representative before that.

He spent much of his childhood in Butler while his parents worked at VA Butler Healthcare.

In his May announcement, Santorum said he was running to represent American workers and to fight to create more jobs in the country.