As I noted yesterday, Ron Paul’s campaign claimed late yesterday that a deal had been struck with the Huckabee camp under which Paul’s supporters at the West Virginia GOP Convention agreed to support Huckabee on the second ballot in exchange for which Paul would get three of the 21 delegates.
Now, the Huckabee camp denies that such a deal existed and the state GOP says Huckabee got all 21 delegates:
CHARLESTON, W. Va. — Two Republican presidential campaigns are engaged in a dispute over the first delegates awarded today on the most important primary day in history.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee won a victory at the West Virginia Republican convention Tuesday, taking 18 delegates for the national convention.
Supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul and Arizona Senator John McCain switched their support to Huckabee in the second round of voting.
The Paul campaign says the price of that support was three of Huckabee’s delegates.
Huckabee’s campaign denies there was any deal.
Huckabee spokeswoman Alice Stewart said there’s no truth to the story.
But John Tate, national political director of the Paul campaign, says a deal was done and the Paul campaign plans to hold Huckabee to it.
State Republican Chairman Doug McKinney says the convention was winner-take-all.
McKinney says the only way Huckabee could give away delegates is for them to resign.
They would then be available for Paul’s campaign to appoint as his delegates.
One West Virginia political blogger notes that there was a trend of Paul votes to Huckabee on the second ballot:
Take a look at some of the votes and you can see a definite Paul shift to Huckabee in the second round.
Take Boone County. In the first round of voting, Paul got the most votes with 7. Huckabee had one. In the second round, Huckabee had 10 votes.
In Jefferson County, Huckabee had 3 votes in the first round and 17 in the second round. Paul had 14 votes from Jefferson County in the first round.
You can see a trend in the voting. The talk before the end of that first round was that the Paul delegates would just not vote in the second round, but they did.
So, at least they were under the impression there was a deal, according to Burgess. The next question is whether Huckabee will hold up to his end of that bargain.
Or whether there was a bargain to begin with it would seem.
