Rick Santorum Staffers Switch Tactics, Form Super PAC

A new super PAC has launched to back Rick Santorum's second run for president, ABC News can report exclusively.

This comes as the runner-up for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination works to find his footing amid low fundraising totals and a crowded field.

The super PAC, Take America Back PAC, is being run by Santorum's former campaign manager and two other staff members who left his campaign last month to support him on their own. Their background organizing and running logistics may signal many tasks traditionally run by a campaign -- such as building grassroots support for a candidate -- could shift to this Super PAC, which unlike a campaign can raise unlimited amounts of cash. The group filed with the Federal Election Commission Tuesday.

"We're excited about moving forward," the former campaign manager, Terry Allen, told ABC News. "We're just getting going."

Coupled with the sagging poll numbers for Santorum, a staffing shake-up this early in the race could signal disarray, but aides stressed the change was merely a tactical shift.

Allen, Iowa state coordinator Jon Jones, and a digital strategist, Steve Hilliard, told Santorum and his chief strategist, John Brabender, on July 18 that they planned to leave to launch the Super PAC, which is prohibited by law from coordinating with the campaign, Brabender told ABC News. The news was first reported by Politico.

While super PACs backing other candidates have already brought in significant hauls, sometimes far outpacing candidates' own fundraising -- a pro-Jeb Bush group raised over $103 million -- none supporting Santorum have yet said how much they have raised. Only one other, Working Again PAC, has said it is backing him. It filed with the FEC just after last quarter's deadline to declare totals; so far, it has released one video, online, touting Santorum's conservative credentials.

Santorum's campaign funds, meanwhile, have lagged far behind others'; he reported about $607,000 raised by the end of June, putting him ahead of just a few other candidates in the crowded field.

Despite being the runner-up for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, he received just 1 percent support among potential Republican voters in an ABC News/Washington Post poll last month, among the lowest in the field. He failed to qualify for today's Fox News-hosted debate, whose entry was based on national poll numbers -- a decision Santorum has criticized.

"National polls mean nothing," Santorum, whose numbers also lagged for months during his last campaign, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "And so this is an arbitrary figure."

Brabender dismissed suggestions the campaign was moving slower than competitors' and said that, while the campaign still hadn't hired a manager to replace Allen, that position focused more on operations than determining strategy -- and that the campaign had significantly more people on its payroll than four years ago.

Brabender stressed he was always the brains behind strategy--as he was four years ago--and will continue in that role.

"The campaigns are just starting," Brabender said. "There are no votes that are going to be taken for months and months and months right now."

But Santorum's slowness in deciding if he would run -- and his lack of outreach to those who worked for him in 2012 -- pushed a lot of those people to join other campaigns, one of his 2012 Iowa staffers told ABC News.

"A lot of us were hurt that the phone never rang, his voice was never heard, [and there was] no invitation early on to join his campaign, even as the months rolled on," the staffer, who is now aligned with a rival presidential campaign, said. "The phone never rang."

The same staffer described the "love" former aides have for the former Pennsylvania senator and for the "battles he's fought in the past" but said when the "campaign was over, it was over."

"People still need a little love coming back to them and they didn't feel that, they didn't feel it, I have to be honest with you. We are still human beings. Little acts of outreach and kindness and thoughtfulness (would go a long way)," he said.

Brabender said he had not heard the criticism "from anybody" -- but that, in any case, Santorum did not have the luxury of constantly traveling to Iowa in the intervening years.

"Unlike people who are independently wealthy in this race, Sen. Santorum had to work," Brabender said.

Santorum's spokesman Matt Beynon said when Allen left, remaining staffers thought it was a "really good thing" and told him "we wish you luck."

"If Terry is going down the path we are going down, we wish him luck as we do everyone who is supporting Rick Santorum," Beynon said. "Anyone who supports him, God bless them."

Beynon stressed Santorum is going to shake every hand to try and win the caucuses for a second time.

"We are going to all the rural counties," Beynon said. "Maybe Donald Trump's private plane and Jeb Bush's private plane don't get into those airports, but you get in your car and you drive and that's how you earn respect and how you earn votes. You go to the incorporated towns and sit down with voters and talk to them...This isn't about airplane hangar rallies, this is about earning votes."