The first in a series.

TUCSON, Ariz. — “You know who I think needs to run for president?” asks one of the workers clearing away the chairs at the Mason hall where GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum just finished addressing supporters. “Sheldon Adelson.”

A Santorum supporter wears a bumper sticker on his hat during a rally at the Sabbar Shrine Center in Tucson. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)“Who?” asks a fellow worker at the Tucson Tea Party event.

“Sheldon Adelson,” the first man responds. “He’s the guy who gave $21 million to Gingrich’s super PAC.”

As they continue packing up the 500 or so chairs in the sprawling hall, the second man muses that super PACs aren’t all that bad.

“The national GOP, I don’t trust them,” he says, arguing that if Adelson’s $21 million had gone to the national party, it would have been spent on “booze and women” – a reference, perhaps, to the lesbian strip-club scandal that rocked the Republican National Committee under Michael Steele’s leadership in 2010.