Mike Huckabee has won the vote at the West Virginia GOP’s state convention, and all 18 of the state’s delegates:
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Mike Huckabee won the first contest declared on Super Tuesday, picking up all 18 national delegates awarded at West Virginia’s state GOP convention.
Huckabee bested Mitt Romney, who entered the Mountain State event with the largest bloc of pledged convention-goers. Both men and Ron Paul made in-person appeals to the more than 1,100 convention delegates attending Tuesday’s convention.
But the former Arkansas governor beat his Massachusetts counterpart after delegates for John McCain defected to his side.
The first round of voting at the state convention produced no winner, but eliminated Paul after his fourth-place finish.
There’s no official confirmation of this yet, but Marc Ambinder reports on what looks like some really interesting intrigue:
05 Feb 2008 01:42 pm
After the first round of balloting in West Virginia, Mitt Romney was solidly in the lead with 41% of the votes, followed by Mike Huckabee with 33% and John McCain with 16%.
Since 50% is needed to win all 18 delegates, a second balloting is underway.
But sources say that representatives for John McCain called many of his reps in WV and asked them to vote for Huckabee…in order to thwart Romney on the second ballot.
This is going to be ammunition for those who believe that there is a deal between McCain and Huckabee.
Update: Don Surber was there and notes the following:
On the first ballot, no one got the majority needed to win. It was Romney 41%, Huckabee 33%, McCain 15% and Paul 10%. Paul was dropped for the second ballot.
But during the lunch break, Huckabee picked up nearly all of the Paul and McCain votes in a stop Mitt effort.
That’s a big blow to Romney who wasted a campaign stop on Super Tuesday only to see him get the same number of delegates as McCain who skipped Charleston: zero.
Interesting that the Paul people went with Huckabee as well.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Just a quick note on why Paul supporters went to Huckabee. Huckabee pledged three of the eighteen delegates to Paul in exchange for his votes. The Paul campaign just put out a press release on the matter.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
[...] to commenter Paul Harrell [...]
February 7th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Nothing good has ever came out of WV. Huckabee should be embarassed.