http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... aul_perry/
INDIANOLA, Iowa—Michele Bachmann's struggling presidential campaign saw her Iowa chairman defect Wednesday to rival Ron Paul's side, an embarrassing blow that came as some called for her to leave the race to free up her supporters for other candidates.
Hours after appearing with Bachmann at an event, state Sen. Kent Sorenson gave his endorsement to the Texas congressman at a Des Moines rally. Sorenson said he resigned from Bachmann's campaign to back Paul, whom he called the most conservative of the top-tier candidates.
Bachmann said Sorenson made the jump after "he was offered a large sum of money to go to work for the Paul campaign."
"Kent said to me yesterday that `everyone sells out in Iowa, why shouldn't I,'" Bachmann said in a written statement. "Then he told me he would stay with our campaign. The Ron Paul campaign has to answer for its actions."
Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton said the campaign was not paying Sorenson and that he was puzzled why Bachmann would make such a claim against an elected official popular with Iowa conservatives.
"We've always known Michele to be an honorable person. She should stop slandering an honorable Iowa state senator," Benton said.
Benton said Paul campaign officials had been begun speaking to Sorenson "in earnest" in the last few days, and that he had informed the campaign Wednesday he was ready to sign on.
Sorenson announced the switch during a Paul veterans rally in Des Moines. He didn't immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press to address Bachmann's charges that the move was financially based.
"The fact is, there is a clear top tier in the race for the Republican nomination for president, both here in Iowa and nationally. Ron Paul is easily the most conservative of this group," Sorenson said in a statement. "The truth is, it was an excruciatingly difficult decision for me to decide between supporting Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at the beginning of this campaign."
Susan Geddes, a veteran operative in conservative GOP political circles who managed Sorenson's 2008 and 2010 legislative races, said Sorenson had told her several times, as recently as last month, that the Paul campaign had offered him money to leave Bachmann's campaign for the Texas congressman's.
Geddes said Sorenson had damaged his political future in Iowa by abandoning Bachmann's campaign less than a week before the caucuses.
"He just committed political suicide," she said.
Bachmann has been on a frantic 99-county push across Iowa in an effort to recover from the slide that followed her Iowa straw poll victory in August. Paul was a close second in that contest.
