National Federation of Republican Assemblies Convention

....was held in St. Louis over the weekend. This organization bills itself as "the Republican Wing of the Republican Party". As you might imagine, they run from very conservative to downright reactionary!

Two prizes were up for grabs at this event. One was a straw poll in which all 250 or so attendees could vote. The other was the official endorsement of the organization, and only delegates could vote in that. I have been unable to discover how many of those attendees were delegates, but judging from the divergent results in the two votes, I would have to say less than half.

Here are the results from the straw poll....

Fred Thompson 33%
Mitt Romney 15%
Ron Paul 14%
Duncan Hunter 10%
Tom Tancredo 10%
John Cox 6%
Newt Gingrich 3%
Mike Huckabee 3%
Tommy Thompson 2%
John McCain 2%
Rudy Giuliani 1%
Sam Brownback 1%

The endorsement process was conducted differently. A two-thirds majority was required for an endorsement. The delegates went into a separate room and voted for their candidates. Only the ones who got more than 15% that first round would be voted on in subsequent rounds. As it was, only two men got more than 15% of the vote- Congressman Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson. Hunter actually got more votes than Thompson among the delegates- 60%. I find it odd that Hunter got only 10% of the total attendees votes and yet he got 60% of the delegates votes. Fred Thompson more than tripled Hunter's total in the straw poll, yet got heavily out-voted in the endorsement chase. Six more rounds of voting were held in an effort to get some undecideds or Thompson people to switch to Hunter so that the required two-thirds majority could be met and they could give an endorsement. The word is that Hunter got up to 64.8 percent- less than two percent away from an endorsement.

In the end, no endorsement was made.