2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says “no election’s perfect” and he holds no grudge against Iowa’s Caucuses. Mitt Romney was declared the winner by eight votes over Santorum on Caucus night, but certified results released in mid-January showed Santorum the winner of the 2012 Iowa Caucuses, by 34 votes.
“I don’t think there’s anything for Iowa to apologize for,” Santorum says. “…No election’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. You transpose a digit and you’re calling in all these results. No result is perfect, so I felt Iowa did a great job. Would I have preferred to have the error on the other side? Yes, but I can’t look at the caucus process and see a problem here.”
Santorum says people tell him he got “ripped off” because he didn’t get the campaign boost of being declared the victor on Caucus night, but he disagrees.
“No I didn’t (get ripped off),” Santorum says. “…The vote differential turned out to be 42. Well, in most cases that would be: ‘Who cares?’…In this case it happened to be the difference between: ‘You won and you lost.’ The Iowa Caucus performed as well as it ever has. That’s the tragedy about the controversy around the Caucuses at the time…This was the highest level of certification in the history of the Iowa Caucuses and better than, probably, any other Caucus that was run in the country.”
Santorum made his comments during taping of the “Iowa Press” program which airs Friday night at 7:30 on Iowa Public Television. Santorum is in Iowa today to meet with supporters and campaign with Secretary of State Matt Schultz. Schultz endorsed Santorum before the 2012 Iowa Caucuses and Santorum has endorsed Schultz’s bid for Iowa’s third district congressional seat.