While South Carolina’s delegates to the national GOP convention are locked in to support the candidates who won their respective district - or statewide – contests, this isn’t stopping the Santorum campaign from organizing efforts to elect delegates at the upcoming district conventions. According to a number of sources, the Santorum campaign is anticipating a “brokered” convention (which hasn’t happened in nearly 100 years) and is preparing to compete once nomination voting has gone several rounds and delegates are no longer obligated to support their voters’ choice and are then free to support the candidate of their own choosing.

But Santorum, long connected to K Street lobbyists and the game of Washington influence peddling, is no stranger to the kind of insider power plays that helped fuel the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress, as well as the TEA Party backlash which followed in the 2010 elections.

While they’re reportedly working statewide, their most intense efforts seem aimed at the Sixth District convention, where turnout is usually low and an orchestrated effort could give them control over the district’s three delegates. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich carried the Sixth, one of five of the state’s seven Congressional districts that he won. Mitt Romney won the First and Second Districts. Santorum led in none of the state’s districts, finishing third place overall.

At the center of these efforts, our sources identified national Santorum people, along with several in-state assets, including Jim Hirni, a convicted lobbyist who moved to South Carolina while working as an informant to avoid jail time for his role in bribing Senate staffers while working for the Santorum campaign. Also named was Berkeley County GOP Chair Tim Callanan, known for launching (and then covering up) vicious verbal tactics against his critics as well as his melodramatic short-lived resignation from his Chairmanship which aimed to generate publicity for the Santorum campaign.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Reportedly even high-profile GOP figures who were past convention delegates were told they will be opposed by this effort if they don’t pledge their support to Santorum.

These kinds of efforts are reminiscent of those undertaken in 1988 by supporters of Pat Robertson. While those efforts saw some success in sending delegates to the national convention, the strong-arming fueled long-standing factional rivalries around the state and started new ones, some of them long-lasting ones which damaged party unity. Those we’ve talked with about this ongoing effort were bitter about these efforts to select delegates on their willingness to follow orders instead of representing their districts and party organizations, warning that these efforts – and those who took part in them - would not be forgotten.

Attempting to game the system for his benefit didn’t help Santorum keep his Senate seat in 2006. Hopefully these kinds of heavy-handed tactics won’t be any more productive this time around.