Excel: Searching for multiple terms in a cell

Try using COUNT function like this

=IF(COUNT(SEARCH({"Romney","Obama","Gingrich"},C1)),1,"")

Note that you don't need the wildcards (as teylyn says) and unless there's a specific reason "1" doesn't need quotes (in fact that makes it a text value)

Another way

=IF(SUMPRODUCT(--(NOT(ISERR(SEARCH({"Gingrich","Obama","Romney"},C1)))))>0,"1","")

Also, if you keep a list of values in, say A1 to A3, then you can use

=IF(SUMPRODUCT(--(NOT(ISERR(SEARCH($A$1:$A$3,C1)))))>0,"1","")

The wildcards are not necessary at all in the Search() function, since Search() returns the position of the found string.