Where They Live Now: Brownback

Rolling Stone magazine describes the place the five Brownback kids call home:

Brownback's house in Topeka perches atop a hill, shielded from the road behind a great arc of driveway in a nameless suburb so new that the grass has yet to sprout on nearby lawns. On a recent Sunday, Brownback sits in the kitchen, looking relaxed in jeans and an orange sweatshirt that says HOODWINKED, the name of his oldest son's band.

The Senator seems to appreciate rock -- one of his buddies is Kerry Livgren, lead singer of the classic band Kansas, and he picked their oldie "Carry On My Wayward Son" as his MySpace theme song.

Sparrowblog location: Goodland, Kansas, on the high plains.

Where They Live Now: Romney

Mitt Romney didn't always own a big pink colonial house with a tennis court and swimming pool in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he worships at this Mormon Temple:

Photo credit: bunkosquad 

... and a vacation home right on Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire (where he and his sons have rescued sinking people):

Photo credit: timgolden

... and a mansion in Park City, Utah near these ski slopes:

Photo credit: tkelly 

He and Ann started out their married life in a basement apartment with a cement floor. (BTW, didja know that she grew up Episcopalian and converted to Mormonism after falling in love with Mitt?) Back then, the Romneys saved every penny they could:

Instead of buying milk at a nearby store, Mitt insisted on driving to a creamery where it was cheaper. Instead of buying an ice cream or popcorn at a movie theater, he would save money by eating ice cream and popping corn at home before the movie.

Now they have lots of pennies and probably no time for the movies.

Where They Live Now: McCain

So far, sparrowresearch shows that all the candidates live in enormous spaces. Take the McCain kids, for example, who grew up in the 1951 ranch house that was their Mom's childhood home just north of downtown Phoenix, Arizona. They had 2.16 acres of land, a pool, citrus and pecan trees, a view of the Squaw Peak mountains, a large guest house, nine bedrooms (the master had a Mexican-tiled patio with a whirlpool tub and outdoor fireplace ... suh-weet!), eight bathrooms, and security cameras. You can see a photo of the place here.

Since only Bridget is home these days, the family decided to move but had some trouble selling the house. Last year, they bought two condos at the Residences at 2211 Camelback for $4.66 million and combined them. The place has a rooftop pool, business center, hi-tech security & surveillance, and a concierge. Just what every fifteen-year-old needs to survive a presidential campaign, don't you think? They're probably waiting for Bridget to finish up the school year before moving -- that's my guess, anyway.

Where They Live Now: Giuliani

In Manhattan, Rudy and his wife Judith live in a nine-room prewar co-op on the Upper East Side. A pre-war co-op sounds kinda dowdy, right? Well, it's definitely not. Take a look at this. The Giulianis also own a huge house in the Hamptons.

Giuliani's step-daughter, Whitney Mayer Nathan, is this cover girl who swims, rides horses, sings soprano a capella, and loves India. She's a junior at Skidmore.

The Candidates' Cribs

They all want to move into the White House, but where do they live now? Let's start with the Democrats.

The little tykes in the Edwards family get to run around a huge 28,000-square-foot house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They have a basketball court, a squash court, two stages and a swimming pool. Two stages? Why two?

The Clintons just can't stay away from white houses. They bought one in the burbs (Chappaqua, New York), and added a breakfast wing that's shaped like an octagon with windows on every side. They even spent a chunk of cash on a finial. Ten points if you know what a finial is. What a strange word. Looks like final spelled wrong. Go here to see a close-up of the house, the octagon, and the finial.

Dressed like glamorous witches, the Obama girls trick-or-treated through Kenwood, their quiet South Side neighborhood in Chicago. They live in a turn-of-the-century brick house with a large backyard, but six condos might be built in the empty lot around the corner any day now so it could get noisy.

One of Senator Biden's hobbies during his 87-minute train ride from Wilmington, Delaware to D.C. is sketching houses in a spiral notebook – a cottage for his widowed mother, a playhouse out by the pond (note: they've got a pond on the property) for the grandkids and daughter Ashley, a vacation home for him and his brother. His place gets torn up a lot thanks to his drawings, and I'll bet he's an HGTV addict, just like me.

Stay tuned for where the Republicans live.