January 16, 2008
Hunter may fight to end

WASHINGTON -- Duncan Hunter's campaign spokesman said on Wednesday that the Alpine Republican may soldier on until the Republican convention late this summer despite having received only about 1.3 percent of the GOP vote in the first four contests for the presidential nomination.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't go right down to the convention. He is not a quitter," said Roy Tyler in a telephone interview one day after former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney breathed new life into his once-faltering presidential campaign with a victory in the Michigan GOP primary.

"With Romney coming out, you basically have three candidates," added Tyler, apparently referring to Romney, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor. "You may have a brokered convention. I don't think anybody really can predict what's going to happen. There are some likelihoods, but it's a wild year."

Tyler also signaled that Hunter has downgraded South Carolina, scene of a key Republican primary on Saturday, in favor of focusing his personal campaign efforts on the GOP caucuses in Nevada on the same day.

While the campaign is running a radio ad in South Carolina, the state where Hunter officially launched his candidacy a year ago, the veteran congressman will be spending the remaining days leading up to Saturday's presidential contests in Nevada.

"You figure where your highest potential is," Tyler said. "It felt better in Nevada."

After having finished in a dead heat with McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for first place in a straw poll last March in South Carolina's Spartanburg County, Hunter had set his sights on the Palmetto State primary as providing his best chance for a breakthrough.

But the decision by Fox News to exclude him from a Republican presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 10 forced Hunter to amend that strategy and caused Tyler to complain bitterly about the media's treatment of his candidate. He included The San Diego Union-Tribune in his indictment, while elaborating on Hunter's complaints in New Hampshire about being excluded from an earlier candidate debate on Jan. 5, only three days before the state's first-in-the-nation primary.

"By golly, he is a valid candidate," Tyler said. "He has beaten almost everybody in the campaign in local [straw polls], and he's beaten some of them pretty severely. And we're talking about the top runners. For him this early to be excluded, it's just not fair."

Dismissing Hunter's anemic share of the vote in GOP nominating contests thus far, Tyler said, "Hunter hasn't had good representation from any media sources including Copley since this thing started. Here he is in his own home state, most of the media he gets there, right in his own hometown, is negative. How many times do we have somebody running for president in San Diego? You would think at least his home town newspaper would try to stay in the middle or better. You guys have done some good articles but you've done a lot of negative stuff, too. And there's nobody that has given him the benefit of the media that the other candidates have got."

So far, Romney has harvested 443,139 votes out of 1,212,237 cast in all the contests to date. In second place is McCain with 361,546 votes, followed by Huckabee, 207,308. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has received 84,554 votes; former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, 50,925; Giuliani, 49,198, and Hunter, 15,567.

Hunter won a delegate in county conventions held in Wyoming, which were won by Romney, but there was no recorded statewide tally.



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