McCain still has edge over Huckabee, votes show
Although presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said the state Republican party was too quick to call the race Saturday night for Arizona Sen. John McCain, new totals released Sunday afternoon didn’t change the results.
Huckabee’s campaign said earlier Sunday that declaring McCain the victor Saturday with 87 percent of precincts counted and 1.8 percentage points separating the two candidates was “an outrage.”
“In other words, more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party,” read a statement by Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins that was posted on the campaign’s Web site.
Luke Esser, chairman of the Washington Republican party, stood by the call.
“If the numbers had been reversed, if Huckabee had been up by same margin with the same underlying dynamic, we would have congratulated Gov. Huckabee and said Sen. McCain finished a strong second,” he said Sunday.
The party released new totals at 5 p.m. Sunday that showed with 93.3 percent of precincts reporting, the margin between Huckabee and McCain remained almost the same.
McCain won 25.4 percent of the delegates and Huckabee had 23.8 percent, shrinking McCain’s edge slightly, to 1.6 percentage points.
Esser said Sunday afternoon that he was in contact with Huckabee’s campaign and they were “working through any issues that exist.”
The statement released earlier by the Huckabee campaign said they had not yet been able to contact Esser. “Our lawyers will be on the ground in Washington State soon,” it said.
Esser said a Huckabee representative told him the campaign wasn’t happy the party had declared McCain the winner, but that the campaign did not detail any legal issues of concern. “If they can provide me with anything of substance to ask about, we’ll be happy to inquire,” Esser said.
Allegations of a premature call are not the only issues that have been raised.
Joe Fuiten, volunteer chairman of the Washington for Huckabee campaign, said he had received a few complaints of irregularities at Pierce County caucuses.
“There were some problems, we just don’t know how widespread they were,” he said, noting he’d already spoken with GOP officials, who assured him they’d be looked into promptly and openly.
Kim Davis of Lakewood, for example, said she felt like proper procedures weren’t followed at her caucus at Lakes High School. Davis, 47, a Huckabee supporter, said people at her table were not given the opportunity to make the case for their candidate or to vote on who among them would get to be delegates.
“Several McCain supporters just decided for the table and filled out the form,” she said. “I got bamboozled.”
Davis concedes that a vote would have likely come out in McCain’s favor, but “at least we’d be following the rules of the caucus.”
Texas Rep. Ron Paul won 20.7 percent of Washington’s precinct delegates, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who dropped out of the race this past week, got 16.7 percent, according to the latest numbers from the state GOP.
On the Democratic side, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama beat New York Sen. Hillary Clinton 2-to-1.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ian Demsky: 253-597-8872
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SUNDAY’S CAMPAIGN DEVELOPMENTSVictory for Obama: Sen. Barack Obama defeated Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Maine’s presidential caucuses as the state’s Democrats overlooked snow to turn out in heavy numbers. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama won 15 of Maine’s 24 delegates to the national convention. Clinton won nine. In the race for the nomination, Clinton leads with 1,136, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Obama has 1,108.
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Change for Clinton: Clinton replaced her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with longtime confidant Maggie Williams. Clinton has lost four consecutive contests since Super Tuesday and faces an uphill climb against Obama in Tuesday’s primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Sunday, Clinton’s advisers confirmed that the former first lady flew to North Carolina last week to lobby John Edwards to endorse her. Solis Doyle announced her resignation in an e-mail, saying that she wasn’t forced out but was exhausted by a race she had expected to be won by Super Tuesday. In the 1990s, Williams was Clinton’s chief of staff in the White House. She has been sharing oversight of the campaign’s day-to-day operations for several weeks.
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Where they stand: Among superdelegates, Clinton retains her lead, according to a survey by The Associated Press. Of the 796 lawmakers, governors and party officials who are Democratic superdelegates, Clinton had 243 and Obama had 156. The national party has named about 720 of the superdelegates. The remainder will be chosen at state party conventions in the spring and summer. AP reporters have interviewed 95 percent of the named delegates, with the most recent round of interviews taking place last week, after Super Tuesday. More than half of them – 399 – have endorsed a candidate. The remaining said they are either undecided or uncommitted.
The Associated Press, Newsday
