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Gov. Paul LePage is upping the stakes in an ongoing dispute within the Maine Republican Party over who should attend the party’s national convention in Tampa, Fla., later this month.

LePage on Friday told a Portland radio show host that if Maine’s delegates to the Republican National Convention are not allowed to take their seats and participate, then LePage would boycott the convention.

“I spoke with him on the phone at 9:13 a.m. and he told me if Maine’s delegates were not going to be seated, then he would not be going,” said Ray Richardson, a conservative talk show host with the Portland-based WLOB radio.

“I said, ‘Are you sure about this?’ and he said, ‘Absolutely,” Richardson said Friday afternoon.

At stake is whether 23 delegates from Maine, all supporters of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, should be allowed to take their seats. The Paul supporters staged somewhat of a coup during the Maine GOP Convention in May. They managed to take over the convention and elect a slate of delegates supportive of Paul.

Both LePage and Maine GOP Party Chairman Charlie Webster have previously said the state’s convention was valid and while they do not support Paul, the state’s delegates should be allowed to be seated at the national convention.

Seating the Paul delegates from Maine in Tampa could decide whether the Texas congressman is given a chance to address the convention formally for 15 minutes. National Republican Party rules require a candidate to receive the support of at least five states for that to happen.

As it stands, Paul has the support of the majority of delegates from Maine, Minnesota, Nevada and Utah. His campaign also is challenging the results of state conventions in Massachusetts, Louisiana and Oregon in hopes of seating delegates from those states at the national convention.

Earlier this week, Webster said he was attempting to broker a compromise, but Richardson said Friday that compromise involved the Paul delegates agreeing that they would be seated only if they voted for Romney at the national convention. The delegates were also asked to allow only Webster or LePage to speak for the Maine GOP in Florida.

Richardson said that compromise was unacceptable to most Republicans, including those who don’t support Paul.

“Listen,” he said. “This is America and you can’t gag people like that, especially when you believe they were fairly elected to their spots in the first place.”

Stavros Mendros, a former Republican lawmaker from Lewiston and one of the Ron Paul delegates, said Friday he was pleased to see LePage upping the ante on the dispute, which is expected to be decided by the Republican National Committee later this month.

“I just hope the party that I believe in, the Republican Party, is going to do the right thing and is not going to suppress votes,” Mendros said.

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A Republican committee in Massachusetts has dumped 17 presidential delegates and alternates who are supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

The Allocations Committee took the action because the delegates failed to meet a deadline for filing an affidavit committing themselves to support Mitt Romney, The Boston Globe reports.

The affidavit required the delegates, chosen in caucuses, to support the former Massachusetts governor because of his resounding victory in the primary, held before the caucuses.

Republican Party rules don’t include any provisions for choosing delegates, and delegates have never been required to sign such affidavits in the past, GOP critics say. They suspect the delegates were ousted simply because they support Paul.

But the Romney campaign was within its rights to axe the delegates, Allocations Committee Chairman Ed McGrath said in a statement.

“Gov. Romney’s campaign, through its representative on the Allocation Committee, made the decision not to certify certain delegates and alternate delegates who were unwilling to sign and return on time the affidavit,” he said.

“The Allocation Committee agreed, by a unanimous vote, that these individuals’ failure to sign and return the correct affidavit on time constituted ‘just cause’ for not being certified as national delegates.”

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Forget Isaac, the tropical storm that forced GOP officials to delay until Tuesday the opening of the Republican National Convention.

The real storm threatening Tampa is churning inside Nevada's Republican delegation.

The state's 28 delegates plus alternates attending the national convention have been buffeted for months by political tempests tearing the party apart.

Supporters of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas have packed the Nevada Republican Party and the convention delegation. Against the odds, they're hoping to nominate the congressman from the floor for president, although Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee-in-waiting who will face President Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 election.

After organizing for years, Paul backers have taken over the Clark County Republican Party, which is at war with the Washoe County Republican Party, which has filed papers to separate from the state GOP.

One happy family Nevada Republicans are not, as they arrive at the party's marquee event where activists meet every four years to give their presidential nominee a celebratory send-off.

"The party's in turmoil right now; that's just a fact," said Wayne Terhune, a longtime Paul supporter from Washoe County and the elected chairman of the Nevada delegation. "It's a very interesting situation. I'm not sure what's going to happen. It's politics. It's power play stuff."

Four years ago, supporters of Paul's 2008 presidential candidacy were literally shut down at the state GOP convention as establishment leaders ended the meeting to prevent a takeover. In the end, only four Paul delegates from Nevada were seated at the national convention, and his backers vowed to take over the party from within.

To some extent, they succeeded. Romney won Nevada's Feb. 4 GOP presidential caucus with 50 percent of the popular vote while Paul came in third. After all other Republicans dropped out of the race, Romney was awarded 20 delegates bound to vote for him at the national convention and Paul won eight delegates.

At the Nevada Republican Convention in May, however, Paul delegates dominated the meeting and elected most of the delegates. As a result, about 22 of the 28 Nevada delegates attending the national convention are really Paul supporters, although all but eight must vote for Romney on the first nominating ballot.

The Romney campaign and his backers on the Republican National Committee spent the past few weeks and days leading up to the convention negotiating, using legal maneuvers and changing the rules to remove or unseat Paul delegates from other states.

"The game plan from the Romney side is to attack our side and try to minimize our chances" of nominating Paul, Bunce said. "It's unfortunate they took those tactics. All we really want is respect for the process. We've played by the rules. Now we're being kind of choked out."

If the move fails, Lake said some Paul supporters may go home angry and not work to help elect Romney.

"A lot of us have been working for four or five years for this man and his message and the movement," Lake said of the Paul Revolution. "And it would be nice if people were to stay motivated and understand that his message is getting louder and people are hearing us. And it hasn't been for nothing."

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In a move destined for criticism moving closer to the 2012 GOP convention, it appears the Republican National Committee (RNC) has upheld the Republican Party of Louisiana's "supplemental rules" which deemed Ron Paul's delegates ineligible in favor of Romney delegates. The GOP's desire to win over Paul supporters is sure to take a hit with this underhanded move.

"We are disappointed and are fighting tooth and nail," John Tate, Paul's campaign manager, told me in an E-mail. "This was but the first step. We are appealing their wrongheaded decision and will be taking it to the credentials committee."

Paul supporters, however, argue that the regulars broke the rules by rejecting Paul's delegates. The Paul forces can now challenge the Committee on Contests decision before the Credentials Committee or before the full convention, although neither tactic is likely to work because Romney controls a majority of delegates.

Paul supporters had been hoping that he would be given a major speaking role at the convention to disseminate his libertarian views as a presidential candidate. But the RNC hasn't announced any such speaking slot.

Clearly the GOP establishment is working to maintain control of the convention and avoid too many Paul delegates causing any upheavals. I am not sure that the Louisiana delegates would have made any difference but this might come down to the principle of the matter as to whether retroactive rule changes are indeed fair practice when voters and convention goes have already had their say.

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With controversy surrounding the seating of GOP delegates in several state conventions, many who caucused for Paul feel disenfranchised by the actions of the GOP and vow to turn against the party this election.

While certain attendees went so far as to call Mitt Romney a "monster," most of Paul's youthful supporters exhibited more frustration and disappointment than anger.

"[The GOP] made it clear yesterday that they see us more as a nuisance than as potential allies," said John Jones, one of 10 Ron Paul-supporting Maine delegates that the RNC stripped of their delegate status on Friday.

"I want to make sure that when the Republican Party loses, terribly to, in my opinion, the worst president in history, I want [them to know] it's because they systematically shut out the most intelligent, most youthful and active voting bloc in American history," said Ron Paul voter Mike Timoney.

"There's no way I could support someone like him," said Kenosha Fisch, an Oklahoma delegate who lost her seat in a bitter power struggle.

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TAMPA, FLA. — The GOP convention doesn't officially start until Monday, but trouble is already brewing between presumptive nominee Mitt Romney and Republicans who are concerned by his campaign making an aggressive power play to control the party.

The drama Friday centered around a contentious meeting of the powerful Rules Committee, where Romney's campaign lieutenants, led by his legal counsel Ben Ginsberg, pushed through several changes that would give Romney broad authority over the Republican nominating process.

According to one source who was at the meeting, the saga ended with former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, the committee chair, hightailing it out of the building before committee members could submit dissenting minority opinions, or "minority reports."

In an interview with Business Insider Friday night, Maine's newly-elected state committeewoman Ashley Ryan, said that committee members opposed to Romney's plan drafted two minority reports immediately after the meeting, stating their position against the changes. Republican Party rules stipulate that people have one hour to submit a minority report after a meeting of the Rules Committee, and that it must have the support of at least 25 percent of the committee.

"The rules say that you have an hour after the meeting, but within 15 minutes, we couldn't find [Chairman Sununu] anywhere," Ryan, a Ron Paul supporter and member of Maine's delegation, said. "Finally, we asked an RNC official if they had seen former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu. He said, 'John Sununu! Everyone's looking for him! But he left the building.'"

Earlier on Friday, Ginsberg and other Romney loyalists tried to neuter the threat of a minority report by raising the threshold of support to 40 percent.

BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller reports that the attempt was forcefully shot down as overreach, even by committee members who voted for Ginsberg's other proposals, including one that would force states to select delegates based on the results of their primary or caucus, and one that would allow the Republican National Committee to change the rules established at the convention.

"It's important to make the rules four years in advance, before we know who the favorites are," Ryan said. "If the national party can just change the rules, what's the point of having a Rules Committee at all?"

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Ron Paul's presidential campaign manager said Tuesday a deal was struck with Republican Party leaders to seat 20 more Paul delegates at the national convention.

Jesse Benton said the agreement calls for the libertarian congressman from Texas to get 17 additional delegates from Louisiana, as well as three more delegates and two alternates from Massachusetts, The New York Times reported.

The status of delegates from Main was still up in the air, the newspaper said, but Benton said there was a proposal to split that state's delegates between Paul and Romney.

The Times said a Republican National Committee official confirmed the deal.

The Times noted Paul is not on the roster of speakers at the GOP national convention next week in Tampa, Fla.

The delegate deal headed off a potential political brouhaha at the convention. The Republican National Committee had concerns Paul supporters from at least six states would disrupt the convention, where Romney is to be formally named the GOP's presidential nominee.

The Portland (Maine) Press Herald had reported earlier the committee had told 20 Maine delegates who support Ron Paul they may not be seated. Republican Maine Gov. Paul LePage threatened to boycott the convention, which starts Monday, if those elected delegates are not seated.

The committee had said Massachusetts and Louisiana Paul delegates would also not be seated, Examiner.com reported.

The threat by a Paul campaign attorney Monday that Paul supporters from across the country would withhold their votes from Romney followed an Aug. 10 decision by the contests committee that procedures used at the chaotic and sometimes violent Oklahoma Republican Convention May 11-12 to select 25 delegates and alternatives to the convention out of a total of 43 were appropriate.

Paul supporters, some claiming to have been physically attacked at the convention by Romney supporters, alleged many party and parliamentary rules, as well as state law, were not followed.

GOP Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin was booed at the convention when she said the party's single goal was to elect Romney as president.

At one point during a challenging moment at the convention, the overhead lights were turned off and a room partition was moved across the room, isolating many attendees from the rest of the body, video aired by KFOR-TV, Oklahoma City, indicated.

The Paul attorney's threat received a cold response from a high-level convention official.

"That this lawyer turned a rules challenge into political blackmail was thuggish and certainly not the way to restore the first principles of this republic, which is the professed aim of the Ron Paul revolution," convention Vice Chairman Solomon Yue told The Washington Times.

Oklahoma GOP Chairman Matt Parnell revealed the threat during a live Times webcast that featured Parnell and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as guests.

The threat would have little effect on the Nov. 6 presidential election's outcome in Oklahoma, which is one of the strongest Republican states in the union, but could tip the balance in swing states such as Colorado and New Hampshire, which have concentrations of "Paulites," the Times said.

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Mitt Romney’s big party has been delayed a day by Hurricane Isaac.

But a few miles up the road at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Ron Paul’s victory party is underway.

An enthusiastic crowd at USF’s Sun Dome is celebrating the Houston-area congressman’s career and his political legacy.

Master of ceremonies Doug Wead, a former adviser to George W. Bush, described Paul as “a clean boat in a sea of garbage.”

Inside the Sun Dome, the Paulian movement was in full voice. “Ron Paul Revolution” and “Hope for America” posters were everywhere. Supporters can dressed in costumes such as a red, white and blue Lady Liberty and a man in a T-shirt declaring, “Tyranny Response Team.”

Paul may not be the Republican Party’s choice this year, but his loyalists are convinced that his libertarian movement will eventually come to dominate the GOP. Wead dismissed comments by GOP establishment figures that Paul represents an out-of-the-mainstream bloc.

Paul’s is not “the extreme wing of the Republican Party,” Wead said. The extreme wing — “they’re meeting starts tomorrow, a few miles away,” he added to the cheers of Paul loyalists.

“Well, what are we?” he asked. “It’s written on your ticket: We are the future.”

Austrian School economist Walter Block dismissed Paul’s critics on the left and right as “ignorant savages.” And he suggested that the 76-year-old Paul may not be through as a presidential candidate.

“It’s true, Ron will be 80 in ’16,” Block said. “But it’s a young 80.”

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