Borys Krawczeniuk, Times Tribune

They believed. Poll after poll said otherwise, but they had faith.

If Rick Santorum stuck it out, he might shock everybody in the Iowa Republican caucus, they thought.

On Tuesday, the former U.S. senator from western Pennsylvania stunned a whole lot of people across the country, finishing second behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by only eight votes out of more 122,000 cast. His longtime followers were not surprised.

“Fantastic,” Rose Ann Gaetano said. “I don’t want to wake up. It’s fantastic. And you know what I was thinking about this morning? I remember that Tuesday night in 2006 and how down I was because he got beat so badly. However, had he been successful that night, would you and I be having this conversation?”

In 2006, Santorum lost his bid for a third Senate term by 17.4 percentage points to Democrat Bob Casey, one of the most lopsided major statewide elections in state history.

Gaetano, a Republican state committeewoman from Dunmore who campaigned for Santorum in Iowa for a few days before the August straw poll, and his other longtime backers across the state celebrated Wednesday as their man officially thrust himself into the upper tier of Republican candidates for president.

They attributed his performance to his grass-roots effort and determination.

“He likes to see the people, he likes to shake their hand, he likes to talk to them,” Gaetano said. “He’s a very personable person. Sometimes people don’t see him that way.”

U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, who as Hazleton’s mayor once had a close working relationship with the former senator, said he spoke to Santorum when Santorum raised money in Pennsylvania after the straw poll.

“He kept saying, ‘Don’t pay attention to the national polls’ because nationally that might be true, but if you look at Iowa, he felt his message was resonating,” Barletta said.

Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman Rob Gleason said Santorum’s strong showing was hinted at by Republican National Committee members he talked to months ago and was “a lesson for all candidates for office.”

“It validated retail campaigning and door-to-door and pound-the-town (campaigning),” Gleason said. “The other guys didn’t do that and it paid off … Who would think for president that anybody would do that?”

Gleason, always practical about a candidate’s chances, was less certain about Santorum’s prospects for winning either the New Hampshire, South Carolina or Florida primary elections later this month. Romney already has plenty of the two things Santorum has lacked: money and organization, he said.

“He (Santorum) would be a fine president of the United States. The guy has a lot of experience, he’s well-educated, he has strong family values,” he said. “But getting there … is a very daunting task.”

Former Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton said Santorum has turned himself into “the standard-bearer for the non-Romney” Republicans, though he said he could not predict what might happen next.

“It’s a long process,” Scranton said. “And lots of people have done very well in Iowa and not done well in the rest of the primaries.”

The process will reveal exactly where the party decides to draw the line between “principled” and “pragmatic” conservative, he said.

“The Republicans have got to figure out where they’re going to be,” he said. “But you have two very strong candidates coming out of Iowa.”

Undoubtedly, political observers again underestimated Santorum, Scranton said.

“Rick has enormous determination, he’s a very motivated guy and that counts for an awful lot. Can you imagine the days and nights of going through 99 counties on a shoestring budget in Iowa?” he said. “To do that time and time and time again without saying, ‘I’ve had it’ is extraordinary.”

Vince Galko, a political consultant who ran Santorum’s 2006 campaign and worked as aide in his Senate office, said he thinks Santorum has “a better organization in New Hampshire” than people think, plus a top grass-roots operative who is from New Hampshire and his share of Republican establishment support there.

“It’s not like they’re starting from scratch,” Galko said. “I’m not under any illusion. This is Mitt Romney’s back yard … I’m never surprised by anything Rick Santorum can pull off because he’s the hardest worker I know.”

Gaetano said she might travel to South Carolina later this month to volunteer for Santorum’s campaign there.

“He always said, God had other plans for him,” she said. “And maybe these are the plans God had for him.”