Huckabee challenges Washington results
FOX News is reporting that Mike Huckabee is challenging the results of the Washington primary on Saturday, February 9. Read the full story here.
Mike Huckabee is challenging the results of the Washington state Republican caucuses, his campaign announced Sunday, after accusing the state party chairman of calling the election for John McCain before all the votes were counted.
The campaign will be pursuing a full investigation, including sending in lawyers to join those already on the scene in the state, officials told FOX News.
Washington State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser announced late Saturday that McCain had won the 2008 Republican caucuses in the state with 87.2 percent of precincts reporting. McCain had 25.5 percent over Huckabee’s 23.7 percent in that race.
Esser issued a statement congratulating McCain on a “hard-fought win,” and Huckabee on a “strong second-place finish.”
Ed Rollins, Huckabee campaign chairman, directly challenged Esser’s move, saying the count was incomplete because the other 12.8 percent of precincts could tip the scales since McCain was beating Huckabee by only a couple hundred votes.
“The chairman showed very bad judgment in stopping the voting last night when announcing John McCain had won, when there was less than a 200-vote margin between the two candidates,” Rollins told FOX News in an exclusive interview. “You never announce a vote, in my 40 years of politics, I have never know anybody to announce a vote count before the vote is counted.”
The story goes on to quote Rollins further:
Rollins was quick to say that the campaign was not accusing the McCain camp of anything untoward, and the issue lies solely with Esser’s call. He added that campaign attorneys have attempted to contact Esser’s lawyers but had not yet received a return phone call.The final results came during the night after the race had been declared too close to call and Washington GOP election officials decided to call it a night. Esser said a final tally would not come until Monday.
Hopefully, this will all be sorted out quickly and the campaign can move forward into Virginia and Maryland on Tuesday. I will post more details when they are available.
That’s my take!
Larry
Larry – I just posted some more about this at OneMom.