Web Copycat Thumbs Nose at State GOP over Caucus Statement

Tacoma, WA -

Washington Post's "The Trail" blog has reported on an apparent conflict within the Washington State GOP web ranks. The Washington State Republican Party's actual homepage, http://www.wsrp.org, is the location of the most up-to-date caucus results, and more importantly the statement made Saturday night by State Chairman Luke Esser that the race had been called for John McCain with only 87% of the vote counted. That decision has been questioned by a number of media outlets and the Huckabee campaign itself.

That tiff has set the stage for what Republican party communications director Patrick Bell calls a "spoof site", http://www.wagop.org, which has been set up by an out-of-state group with an identical front page to wsrp.org yet with a header that reads, "THE RACE IS NOT OVER ~ MANY VOTES HAVE NOT BEEN COUNTED ~ THERE IS NO WINNER YET."

So far the creaters of wagop.org have not been uncovered, nor has the Republican vote count been completed. With 93.3% of returns tallied as of late last night, McCain still leads Huckabee 25.4 to 23.8. More votes are expected to be counted today, with the full count to be done later this week.