Andrew Burton for The New York Times  Rick Santorum spoke at the Southern G.O.P. Leadership Conference at the College of Charleston in South Carolina on Thursday.  WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum arrived on Capitol Hill as a new member of Congress in January 1991, 32 years old and bristling with the impatience of a man looking to kick up a fuss. Eight months later, he got his chance when he learned of lawmaker overdrafts at the little-known House bank.  Over beers with rebellious Republican newcomers who became known as the Gang of Seven, Mr. Santorum helped plot a freshmen’s revolt. They would take to the House floor, one by one, to shame Democratic leaders into releasing the check-bouncers’ names.  “We decided to pick a fight,” Scott L. Klug, one of the rebels, recalled.  That fight grew into “Rubbergate,” a scandal that earned Mr. Santorum, who is now seeking the Republican nomination for president, a reputation as a reformer and helped land him in the Senate; there, he drew national attention as a pugnacious opponent of abortion and gay rights. Now, heading into a South Carolina primary that he hopes will establish him as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, Mr. Santorum is spotlighting his time in Congress, branding himself as a “threat to the establishment” who had “shaken things up in Washington” and “wasn’t a member of the club.”  But a look at the arc of Mr. Santorum’s political career, from his days as a fresh-faced College Republican to his bruising defeat for a third term in 2006, reveals a side of Mr. Santorum beyond that of reformer and abortion foe. He emerges as a savvy operator and sharp tactician, a climber who became a member of the Washington establishment that he had once railed against.  Mr. Santorum won election in 1990 to the House by attacking his Democratic opponent for living in Washington while representing Pennsylvania; by 2006 his critics said the same of him. As the third-ranking Senate Republican, he was a point man in a controversial effort to place Republicans in lobbying jobs. And his finances came into question, amid controversy over political donations and tuition money he accepted.  “There was an evolution there,” said G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin and Marshall College who has followed Mr. Santorum’s career. “He went from someone who criticized the exercise of power and wanted reforms, and turned into Mr. Insider, calling people, making deals.”  Mr. Santorum spent Thursday basking in the news that he, not Mr. Romney, was the top vote-getter in the recent Iowa caucuses. Officials from his campaign did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment. But John T. Doolittle, a Santorum supporter and member of the Gang of Seven, said Mr. Santorum had simply followed the time-worn path of the most effective legislators in Washington from both parties.  “You come as an outsider; some people never really learn the levers of power,” Mr. Doolittle said. “But others, like Rick, did. You want somebody who can be effective” at using those levers “to advance your values and your ideals.”  On his first day of work in the Capitol, Mr. Santorum showed up with a swagger.  The 1990 election cycle had been a tough one for Republicans, and Mr. Santorum was among a handful of newcomers who had beaten Democrats. (John A. Boehner, now the House speaker and a fellow member of the Gang of Seven, was also in that Republican freshman class.) Not only that, Mr. Santorum was an unabashed conservative who had won in a swing state. He began by demanding top committee assignments, asserting himself in a way few freshmen would.  “He was part of this group that came in, from the very first moment, and said, ‘We have as much authority in this place as John Dingell or anybody who has been here for 20 years,’ ” said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman. “They did not walk in believing we are the new kids and it’s our job to sit in the back.”
When Rick Santorum entered the House in 1991, he joined with a group of other freshmen to shame the House leadership into releasing the names of those who bounced checks at the House bank.