Rick Santorum’s campaign wasn’t having any talk of a “split decision” in Iowa, as the state GOP called it Thursday morning. They insisted that the world acknowledge what the final vote tallies plainly showed: Santorum won.
Now it seems that the GOP is coming around. State party chair Matt Strawn said in a radio interview this afternoon that he owes Santorum, who he identified as the clear winner, an apology.
The final count shows Santorum with a 34 vote lead, reversing an eight vote Romney lead in the unofficial caucus night tally. There are still eight precincts that, due to an apparent clerical error, were not properly certified. Add in their unofficial total and Santorum’s lead increases to 69.
But the real point of the Iowa caucuses is election night momentum and campaign aides, robbed of their boost on January 3, were upset that both the state party and Romney campaign did not acknowledge what appeared to be a victory after the fact.
Strawn said Thursday that the results signaled a “split decision” based on the missing precincts and that he congratulated both candidates. But Santorum’s Iowa campaign manager, Cody Brown, noted to TPM that Strawn was less diplomatic when he initially announced the initial caucus results despite Romney’s razor-thin unofficial count.
“Congratulations to Governor Mitt Romney, winner of the 2012 Iowa Caucuses,” Strawn said at the time. “Congratulations to Senator Santorum for a very close second place finish in an excellent race here.”
“It is peculiar that the Republican Party of Iowa would prematurely declare Mitt Romney the ‘winner of the 2012 Iowa caucuses’ when Romney led by eight votes without a single precinct certified,” Brown told TPM. “It is even more peculiar that the RPI has not yet declared Rick Santorum ‘the winner of the 2012 Iowa caucuses’ after the certified results reveal that Rick Santorum defeated Mitt Romney by 34 votes.”
He added: “How can the RPI declare a winner using unofficial results and not declare a winner using official results?”
The Santorum campaign didn’t wait for Strawn to come around before blasting out an e-mail this morning celebrating their victory.
“We’ve had two early state contests with two winners – and the narrative that Governor Romney and the media have been touting of ‘inevitability’ has been destroyed,” Santorum communications director Hogan Gidley said in a statement celebrating the results.
The campaign is also pushing back against the Romney camp’s statement that the updated results are a “virtual tie,” despite declaring his own victory with a smaller unofficial margin.
“He sounds like a kid who didn’t get what he wanted for his birthday so he smashed the cake,” Santorum adviser John Brabender told ABC News.
Despite the controversy surrounding the results, several local GOP officials and consultants praised Strawn’s handling of the matter in interviews with TPM, noting that unlike other states, the caucuses are run entirely by volunteers and may be more subject to mishaps in a close race.
“You’re looking at a volunteer base of 3500 to 4000 people,” Judy Davidson, chair of the Scott County GOP, told TPM. “There’s going to be — and I know it’s not fair to the candidates — probably some variances.”
