Yes, I do think this guy would still have say over the hiring choice. Part of me wonders if this is all a political maneuver on his part, but I can get sort of crazy reading things that are simply not there into a situation.

I think that I messed up handling this right from the start. As soon as he started talking about wanting someone to be on call for tech support, I should have just said that I was only interested in project based contract work at the moment. It's so annoying. Now I am losing this contract work!