BUTLERTWP — Along with some hot chicken noodle and broccoli soup, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum on Saturday served up some cold reality.

"This is not going to be a race that's going to pretty,"he told a sit-down crowd of some 75 Republican supporters at the Tanglewood Senior Center in Butler Township. "The national media and the wolves on the left are targeting me."

Pennsylvania's junior senator all but acknowledged he was in for the re-election fight of his political life against Democratic state Treasurer Robert Casey Jr., his likely opponent come November.

He even referenced recent polls that are hardly "Mmm, mmm good" for his bid to win a third term.

Saturday's event for the guest of honor was part campaign rally and part homecoming; more the former than latter.

Raised in Butler County, Santorum, 47, still managed time to don a St. Patty's green apron long enough to ladle out some soup as part of the light lunch offered to GOP activists.

But once his kitchen duties were done, he stood front and center in the dining hall and addressed his loyalists.It sounded as a call to arms, but first he laid out the battlefield.

The chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Santorum suggested he is Enemy No. 1 among Democrats in this year's election.

Leading the charge on the other side is Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

"Chuck Schumer has said that this will not be a successful election unless we beat Santorum,"Santorum said.

Democrats, particularly those of the party's liberal wing, would like nothing better than to knock off Santorum, one of the more conservative members and the third ranking Republican leader in the Senate.

The Senate race in Pennsylvania is so key, Santorum noted, that even entertainer turned political gadfly Barbra Streisand has begun criticizing him in Hollywood's political circles while helping raise money for his opponent.

"I didn't even know Barbra Streisand knew who Iwas," Santorum said. "But this is the kind of bull's eye I have on me."

And as a conservative GOPsenator running in a so-called "blue state"—one that has voted for Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 — odds do not bode well for him, Santorum conceded.

He reminded the crowd that former Republican U.S. Sens. John Ashcroft of Missouri, Slade Gordon of Washington, and Spencer Abraham of Michigan — all conservatives running in blue states of their own, lost their last re-election races.

"We're in for a tough race but if there's one county I'm counting on in a big way it's Butler County,"he said. "Butler County keeps growing and increasingly it's giving good Republican margins for candidates running statewide."

But for Santorum, the county is not just another place to stump for votes. He grew up in Butler Township while his parents worked for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center here.

"This a place that's near and dear to my heart," he told his supporters. "In my book, 'It Takes a Family,' I mention Butler as an idyllic place to live. And it's still a great place to raise a family. You guys do it right, here."

Fresh from participating in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Pittsburgh, he headed next to meet with administrators at Butler County Community College and then to speak to a sportsman's group in Allegheny County, so he fielded just a couple of questions.

Santorum, in answering one inquiry, said the dramatic military buildup since the Sept. 11, 2001, terroristic attack and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could be nearing an end.

"The hope is war spending will go down starting this year,"he said. "Instead of increasing military spending at robust levels of 6 or 7 percent, maybe in the future they will be at the rate of inflation."