Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)UPDATED with new information
WASHINGTON -- Rick Santorum was already known as starting from a deficit, delegate-wise, in Ohio. He failed to qualify for any district delegates in three Ohio congressional districts because he didn't turn in delegate names there.
But his delegate troubles go deeper. According to the Ohio Republican Party tonight, the former Pennsylvania U.S. senator filed incomplete delegate slates in six additional Ohio districts.
Altogether, this means Santorum, who until this week had a fair lead in polls in the Republican nominating race, could be ineligible for 18 Ohio district delegates.
Ohio has 66 delegates total, 63 at stake next Tuesday. The candidate with the most delegates wins. Santorum therefore goes into the Ohio primary election with a 29 percent deficit.
What will happen if he wins in a district where he failed to allocate a full slate of three delegates?
In the short term, he will be eligible to take only the delegates he has already allocated in that district, the party says. Yet he will have won that district -- so the unallocated delegates will not be awarded to anyone else, either.
After all, they did not win them.
"On Super Tuesday, if Sen. Santorum were to carry a district where he has not seated a full delegate slate, he will be awarded delegates where he has submitted delegate names," said Ohio Republican Party spokesman Chris Maloney. "And the additional delegates in that district will be unallocated."
This almost certainly sets up challenges, if not from Santorum then from political rivals such as Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.
The state party says it has not faced this situation before, but it has been reviewing its bylaws and is prepared, if there is a challenge, to convene what it calls a "committee on contests."
State Republican Chairman Kevin DeWine would appoint three party members to the committee, and they would make a recommendation to the state party's central committee, which would rule.
If Santorum or another candidate did not like the ruling, he could appeal to the Republican National Committee.
ABC News' The Note broke the story this evening.
The Ohio Republican Party says it discovered Santorum's problem this week. While candidates were supposed to file their delegate slates with the Ohio secretary of state as well as the state party, Santorum only filed his with the secretary of state. The secretary of state, however, has no authority over delegate counts. That office merely needs to make sure that a candidate has qualified with a bare minimum of delegates to get on the ballot.
Secretary of State Jon Husted's office did that, according to the state Republican Party. In the three congressional districts where Santorum filed no slates of delegates whatsoever, Husted's office ruled that Santorum would be ineligible to be on the ballot for district-delegate purposes. This has been known and reported for some time.
Santorum's name will be on ballots in those districts for purposes of another kind of delegate, however, based on the statewide popular vote. In other words, all other candidates will have their names on the ballot twice -- once for district delegates, once for the state delegates. But there are far fewer state delegates to be won than there are district delegates.
The Ohio Republican Party, saying it never got a slate of delegates from the Santorum campaign, got a copy from Husted's office, according to one official. The party needed to review delegate slates in preparation for next week's election. It was only then that it realized there was a problem and began informing all the candidates this week.
Ohio has 16 congressional districts, or will for purposes of this election. (It now has 18 but will lose two at the end of 2012.) Romney, Gingrich and Ron Paul have slates of three delegates in each. But here is how Santorum's slates shake out:
District 1: 3 delegates
District 2: 3 delegates
District 3: 2 delegates
District 4: 1 delegate
District 5: 3 delegates
District 6: 0 delegates
District 7: 3 delegates
District 8: 2 delegates
District 9: 0 delegates
District 10: 1 delegate
District 11: 3 delegates
District 12: 2 delegates
District 13: 0 delegates
District 14: 3 delegates
District 15: 3 delegates
District 16: 1 delegate
This could get interesting, and difficult, for Santorum because his failure includes districts where he might otherwise run well.
He was already at a 3-delegate deficit, for example, in the Steubenville area (District 13) and another 3-delegate deficit further south on Ohio's eastern border (District 6), areas where steel workers and others might remember him from his days serving Pennsylvania. He has campaigned in that region anyway; Santorum's grandfather was a coal miner, as are some of the area's residents.
And he has his other 3-delegate deficit on the West Side of Cleveland and some of its suburbs (District 9). While Romney has been expected to perform better in Northeast Ohio in general, Santorum's social conservative message could appeal to Catholic voters in the western neighborhoods and suburbs.
But Santorum also has diminished his chances in socially conservative counties like Allen, Shelby and Auglaze (District 4) and -- this is noteworthy -- Montgomery, Greene and Fayette counties (District 10). The latter two can be considered Mike DeWine country. DeWine got his political start in Greene and still has his home there. As state attorney general, DeWine is Santorum's highest-profile supporter in Ohio. Akron, too (District 16), is now problematic for Santorum.
A Santorum spokesman has not returned a message seeking comment. But Santorum is in Lake County tonight, where reporters are certain to ask about this. The campaign of his chief competitor, Mitt Romney, has already pounced on Santorum's apparent error.