Illinois ballot deal for Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum


Mitt Romney’s vaunted organization nearly failed him in Illinois, where he only remained eligible for delegates on the ballot after a negotiated truce between his campaign and Rick Santorum’s people.

The problems stem from the campaign relying on Illinois state Treasurer Dan Rutherford. He struggled to acquire enough signatures to qualify for Romney’s delegates and then had the petitions notarized out of state, a violation of state election rules.

Had Santorum’s campaign gone through with their challenge to his petitions, the error could have led to disqualifying Romney from winning any of the state’s delegates.

The petition standoff took place in early January, well before Santorum had risen to be Romney’s chief rival for the GOP nomination. It began when Romney’s campaign challenged the Santorum petitions in 10 of the 14 congressional districts in which the former Pennsylvania senator submitted delegate slates.

Santorum did not qualify at all in four of 18 Illinois congressional districts.

News of the standoff was first reported Thursday by the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, but the Romney campaign’s effort to fix Rutherford’s mess has not previously been disclosed.

One Romney source described Rutherford’s leadership as “a complete disaster” and said Romney’s campaign headquarters had to fly paid staffers to Illinois to collect signatures at Chicago-area train stations and walk precincts because the treasurer’s organization had failed to collect enough signatures.

The Romney high command, the source said, “was flabbergasted that an Illinois statewide official had no organization.”

Once the Romney campaign challenged Santorum’s petitions, the Santorum campaign counter-challenged, pointing out the “fatal error” of the Romney petitions being notarized in Massachusetts instead of Illinois, said Santorum’s Illinois state director, Jon Zahm.

“It’s a pretty serious mistake and I filed that challenge and they eventually asked me to withdraw my challenge in exchange for them withdrawing theirs,” Zahm said. “It was all a big waste of people’s time and money. But I didn’t use a law firm like they did, I did it on my own.”

Rutherford, who is widely expected to have ambitions to run for governor in 2014, then urged Romney’s Boston headquarters to withdraw the challenge to Santorum’s petitions, a request the campaign granted as part of what one Romney adviser called “home rule.”

Zahm told POLITICO the two campaigns then reached an agreement to rescind their respective challenges so both Santorum and Romney would remain eligible to win delegates.

“In Illinois, what is traditional is a don’t ask-don’t tell policy,” Zahm said. “You don’t look at my petitions and I won’t look at yours.”

Rutherford agreed to speak with POLITICO at Romney’s event Friday morning in Rosemont, but then ducked away when approached later. His office has not returned phone calls and the Romney campaign has not granted requests to make him available.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said only that a decision was made to not challenge Santorum’s petitions.

“Sen. Santorum outright failed to qualify to be on the ballot in four congressional districts in Illinois,” she said. “However, in other districts where he fell short, it would have been incumbent on us or another campaign to force him off the ballot. We decided against doing that. All of Sen. Santorum’s ballot access problems have been a result of his own organizational failures.”

Saul declined to respond to requests to elaborate on why that decision was made.

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