McCain was declared the winner of the Washington caucuses, where 18 delegates were at stake. The February 19 primary would determine the other 19 delegates from the state. After the caucuses, Huckabee's campaign indicated that they would challenge the results. Next up was the Potomac primary on February 12, with voting in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. McCain swept the three races and took all 113 delegates which were at stake. The next day, the McCain camp released a memo calling a Huckabee win "mathematically impossible". McCain began to focus on the Democrats, particularly leading candidate Barack Obama, in anticipation of the general election. On February 14, Mitt Romney officially endorsed McCain. Huckabee vowed to stay in the race, saying, "I may get beat, but I'm not going to quit." A few days later, McCain was endorsed by former President George H. W. Bush, in a move intended to shore up his support among base party elements. On February 19, McCain continued his winning ways, picking up wins over Huckabee in the Wisconsin primary and the Washington state primary. McCain and Barack Obama engaged in a pointed exchange over Al-Qaeda in Iraq on February 27. New York Times article on lobbyist On February 20, 2008, The New York Times broke a story involving an alleged romantic affair eight years earlier between McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman, both of whom deny the allegations. The relationship allegedly existed during McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. In separate interviews with The New York Times, two unnamed former associates of McCain said they "became convinced" that a romantic relationship existed and warned him that he was risking his campaign and his political career. Both said McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and that he pledged to keep his distance from Iseman. The associates said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others. A McCain spokesperson characterized the story as a "hit and run smear campaign" and "gutter politics" and went on to say, "It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards [...]" Iseman's employer, Lowell Paxson, disputed McCain's assertion that he had never met with Paxson over a Federal Communications Commission matter mentioned in the original New York Times article. The article received widespread criticism among both liberals and conservatives, McCain supporters and non-supporters as well as talk radio