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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (25934)	2/10/2008 7:26:08 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Huck has spunk Huckabee won't concede Washington state, cites 'legal issues' By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER SEATTLE -- Republican Mike Huckabee said he's not ready to concede Washington state, promising to explore all available legal options and calling the results that led the state party chairman to call the race for Arizona Sen. John McCain "dubious." "The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses," Ed Rollins, Huckabee's campaign chairman said in a statement posted on the campaign's Web site Sunday. Rollins did not specify what the irregularities were and said it was "an outrage" that GOP Chairman Luke Esser declared McCain the winner with just 87 percent of results in Saturday night. "It was Mr. Esser's duty to oversee a fair vote-count process. Washington Republicans know, from bitter experience in the 2004 gubernatorial election, the terrible results that can come from bad ballot-counting," Rollins said, referring to Democrat Chris Gregoire's razor-thin victory over Republican Dino Rossi after two recounts and a court challenge. In a statement released Saturday night, Esser said McCain had beat Huckabee 26 percent to 24 percent. The latest tally provided to The Associated Press had McCain winning 3,468 precinct delegates to Huckabee's 3,226 - a difference of 242 out of nearly 13,500 who had been elected at that point. 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. Rollins said Huckabee's lawyers "are prepared to go to court, and we are also prepared to take our case all the way to the Republican National Convention in September." Citing "tremendous interest" in the results, Esser said the party would try to continue counting caucus results on Sunday, but could not immediately promise that any new results would be released. Texas Rep. Ron Paul won 21 percent of Washington's precinct delegates, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who dropped out of the race this past week, got 17 percent, according to the latest numbers from the GOP. On the Democratic side, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama beat New York Sen. Hillary Clinton 2-to-1. Huckabee trails McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in the overall race for delegates, but has vowed to stay in the race until a candidate earns the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination. Huckabee won all 36 national delegates at stake in Kansas and narrowly held on to win Louisiana's primary on Saturday, but fell short of 50 percent, the threshold needed to claim the 20 delegates that were available. Instead, they will be awarded at a state convention next weekend. Washington state's Republicans have yet to allocate the 40 delegates it will send to the national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul from Sept. 1-4. Washington is the only state where Republicans use both the primary and caucus results to allocate delegates. About half of the delegates will come from the presidential primary on Feb. 19, with the remainder coming from the caucus and convention process.