Five-year-old pickups are an integral part of the American landscape, but one 2006 Dodge Ram has gained some additional recognition in Iowa thanks to a Republican presidential contender’s campaign.
While most candidates use tour buses with enormous graphics to promote their campaigns, Rick Santorum is usually driven around in a Ram 1500 pickup owned by campaign aide Chuck Laudner (similar to the one pictured).
“All of these people and all of these buses and then me – with a Ram pickup truck and one person,” Santorum joked on January 1 in Sioux City, Iowa.
Christened the “Chuck Truck” in honor of its owner, the pickup has become so closely associated with Santorum that it has attracted attention from all sorts of media. Santorum’s campaign has appealed to a populist audience, in part because of budget limitations preventing his campaign from spending on tour buses and airplanes.
When asked by The New York Times about the truck’s significance, Laudner, a former Republican Party of Iowa executive director, revealed that the truck has nearly 180,000 miles on it and that it complements his other 300,000-mile Ram.
But that hasn’t stopped some from questioning the truck’s manufacturer. Even though it was produced when Chrysler was controlled by Daimler and before the automaker was bailed out by the U.S. government in 2009, questions have arisen about from some critics.
Laudner concedes that he’s not a “big fan” of bailouts, but “This is what I drive. I’m not going to swap out vehicles for a political statement.”
References
1.’Ram ‘Chuck Truck’…’ view
