Former Ambassador Jon Huntsman Announces Candidacy

Posted by

Jon Hunts­man June 21, 2011; Ronald Rea­gan Sep­tem­ber 1, 1980. Top photo: Chang W. Lee, New York Times.

Jon Hunts­man for­mally kicked off his cam­paign today in New Jer­sey, in sight of the Statue of Lib­erty — which accord­ing to some is a reminder from the French not to embrace social­ism — evok­ing the spirit of Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan as he announced his can­di­dacy for the 2012 Repub­li­can Party nom­i­na­tion for Pres­i­dent of the United States.

He invoked Rea­gan directly, say­ing that Rea­gan was a can­di­date in a sim­i­larly dif­fi­cult time in the nation’s history.

Politico’s Alexan­der Burns reports that he plans travel to New Hamp­shire later today, South Car­olina on Wednes­day, Orlando, Miami and Naples, Florida on Thurs­day, and Utah plus Nevada on Fri­day. He will set up his national cam­paign office in Orlando, home of his wife, Mary Kaye.

Huntsman’s can­di­dacy is con­sid­ered a long-​​shot. At this writ­ing, he is trad­ing at 12% on Intrade and has a 1.3% polling aver­age at Real Clear Pol­i­tics. Nate Sil­ver gives him odds of 25–1.

I don’t think you need to run down anyone’s rep­u­ta­tion to run for pres­i­dent. I respect my fel­low Repub­li­can can­di­dates. And I respect the pres­i­dent. He and I have a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion on how to help the coun­try we both love. But the ques­tion each of us wants the vot­ers to answer is who will be the bet­ter pres­i­dent, not who’s the bet­ter Amer­i­can. — Jon Hunts­man, in pre­pared remarks reported at Politico

The arti­cle below is an updated and reprinted ver­sion of one that appeared Feb­ru­ary 2, 2011.

In late Jan­u­ary, Jon Hunts­man, Jr., sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion as Ambas­sador to China, a move that was widely regarded (accu­rately, as it turns out) as pre­sag­ing his can­di­dacy for the Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nomination.

Jon Hunts­man, Jr. Source: gawker​.com

Hunts­man was a suc­cess­ful and well-​​liked Gov­er­nor of Utah in 2009 when Pres­i­dent Obama chose him for what is prob­a­bly the most crit­i­cal diplo­matic posi­tion short of Sec­re­tary of State. Hunts­man, in many ways, was an ideal can­di­date for the posi­tion. He served an LDS Mis­sion to Tai­wan and speaks Man­darin. He and his wife, Mary Kaye Cooper Hunts­man, have adopted a Chi­nese child, Gra­cie Mei Hunts­man (born 2000) into their family.

Jon Hunts­man, Jr., is a lead­ing mem­ber of a promi­nent fam­ily in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​​Day Saints (LDS or “Mor­mon”*) reli­gious hier­ar­chy. He was born in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia on March 26, 1960. His fam­ily owns Hunts­man Inter­na­tional LLC, a diver­si­fied chem­i­cal com­pany founded, and still headed, by Jon Hunts­man, Sr. The elder Hunts­man and his fam­ily have been lead­ers in phil­an­thropic giv­ing in Utah, includ­ing fund­ing the Hunts­man Can­cer Insti­tute and donat­ing $250 mil­lion (to date) to its clin­i­cal and research programs.

Jon and Mary Kaye Hunts­man lis­ten to Pres­i­dent Obama announce that Jon is to be named Chi­nese Ambas­sador, May 16, 2009. Source: Life.

Jon Hunts­man, Jr. and his wife, Mary Kaye Cooper (an Orlando, Florida native not born into the LDS Church), met at High­land High School in Salt Lake City in the late 1970s, where they were both active in stu­dent gov­ern­ment. They were mar­ried in 1983.

Along with Gra­cie Mei, they have six nat­ural chil­dren: Mary Anne (born 1985), Abi­gail (born 1986), Eliz­a­beth (born 1989), Jon III (born 1991), and William (born 1993). Another child, Asha Bharati (born 2006) was adopted from India.

After hold­ing sev­eral posi­tions in the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Hunts­man was elected Gov­er­nor of Utah in 2004 with 57% of the vote, defeat­ing Scott Math­e­son, Jr., (him­self a mem­ber of a dying Demo­c­ra­tic polit­i­cal dynasty in the state; his father was Gov­er­nor and his brother is cur­rently a Blue Dog Demo­c­ra­tic Con­gress­man rep­re­sent­ing Utah’s Sec­ond Con­gres­sional Dis­trict). In his re-​​election cam­paign in 2008, Hunts­man won 77% of the vote.

Hunts­man, despite rep­re­sent­ing one of the most socially con­ser­v­a­tive states, con­sis­tently staked out posi­tions that were con­sid­ered quite lib­eral by Utah stan­dards. For exam­ple, he was a strong advo­cate for reform of Utah’s arcane liquor laws. The liquor laws included a pro­vi­sion that liquor could not be served over the bar, but had to be car­ried around the bar to the cus­tomer. One local alter­na­tive weekly sug­gested that the Utah Alco­holic Bev­er­age Com­mis­sion being con­trolled by LDS faith­ful “is like putting cats in charge of dog food.”

Hunts­man was active in push­ing for Utah and other West­ern states to form a com­pact to fight anthro­pogenic global warm­ing from car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. He is in favor of civil unions for gay cou­ples. Hunts­man has been a strong advo­cate for pub­lic edu­ca­tion in Utah and opposed school voucher pro­grams. Like many of his posi­tions, this put him squarely at odds with the much more con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment in the state. (The Utah Repub­li­can Party famously ousted Sen. Robert Ben­nett and is closely allied with the Club for Growth, Tea Party, and 9⁄12 groups.) The State Leg­is­la­ture reg­u­larly fought Gov. Huntsman’s ini­tia­tives. More recently, Huntsman’s for­mer Chief of Staff, Rep. Jason Chaf­fetz (R-​​UT), called Hunts­man “wrong on global warm­ing. It’s a farce.”

On abor­tion and gun con­trol, his posi­tions are much closer to tra­di­tional Repub­li­can party stances.

Huntsman’s fam­ily and per­sonal wealth, his charisma and per­sonal pop­u­lar­ity in the west, and his rel­a­tively mod­er­ate posi­tions will all make him a for­mi­da­ble can­di­date in the gen­eral elec­tion, should he sur­vive the Repub­li­can pri­mary process—as noted by Pres­i­dent Obama dur­ing the Chi­nese state visit in January.

On the minus side, his LDS faith and his anti-​​Tea Party posi­tions may make it dif­fi­cult for him to sur­vive the Repub­li­can pri­mary, espe­cially if the process is dom­i­nated by evan­gel­i­cal non-​​LDS Chris­tians, who are clearly uncom­fort­able with a Mor­mon candidate.

*In some cir­cles, the term “Mor­mon” is felt to be pejo­ra­tive. The LDS Church uses “LDS” exclu­sively as short­hand for the church’s full name.

Related arti­cles



Leave a Reply

  2. How­ever, Hun­st­man gets Harry Reid’s vote.

    This looks to me more like a jab at Rom­ney than sup­port for Hunts­man, though. I’m not sure there are more than twelve peo­ple in Amer­ica who actu­ally LIKE Mitt Rom­ney… (and all twelve of them are named Romney.)

  3. Rom­ney is actu­ally quite pop­u­lar in Utah. They think Hunts­man is an inter­loper. He will get at least 6 elec­toral votes vs. Obama.

  4. @Treme… Rom­ney is ac­tu­ally quite pop­u­lar in Utah. They think Hunts­man is an interloper.

    That sur­prises me. Wasn’t Hun­st­man hugely pop­u­lar as a gov­er­nor… like, 80% approval ratings?

    Is it just that in Utah they think it’s “Mitt’s turn” this time so nobody should horn in on him… or what?


  5. fil­istro:

    @Treme… Rom­ney is ac­tu­ally quite pop­u­lar in Utah. They think Hunts­man is an interloper.

    That sur­prises me. Wasn’t Hun­st­man hugely pop­u­lar as a gov­er­nor… like, 80% ap­proval ratings?

    Yes. How­ever, the Teaper /​ 9⁄12 groups hate, hate, hate, him. Call him “Prince Jon”. There are no rad­i­cal left­ies in Utah, so he has a coali­tion of the mod­er­ate left­ies (oh, heck, might as well vote for him, he’s not as bad as Hatch or Chaf­fetz) and the mod­er­ate right­ies. That’s where his 80% comes from.

    Is it just that in Utah they think it’s “Mitt’s turn” this time so no­body should horn in on him… or what?

    Yes, exactly. Remem­ber that the LDS belief is that you are “called” to be the Prophet, or a Mis­sion­ary, or lay Bishop, or what­ever. I don’t pre­sume to know, but I’d spec­u­late that they think that Pres­i­dent is Romney’s call­ing, not Huntsman’s.

  6. That’s not so impor­tant on its face. After all, it’s not like Democ­rats were going to be vot­ing for either Rom­ney or Hunts­man. But even among Repub­li­cans, 18% said they wouldn’t vote for an LDS can­di­date. I won­der what per­cent of Repub­li­cans would say that they’d never vote for an African-​​American.

    By the way, my wife said some­thing to me last night about that whole “African-​​American” thing. If you were born in Jamaica, and moved to the United States, are you an “African-​​American”? One would think such a per­son would be a “Jamaican-​​American” if one felt com­pelled to hyphen­ate. It reminds me of the absur­dity of watch­ing, on some national news broad­cast, a reporter refer­ring to riot­ers in Paris as “African-​​Americans”, when I’d imag­ine that exactly zero of them were res­i­dents or cit­i­zens of the United States.

  7. Yeah and Hunts­man didn’t have a bad tone in his mes­sage other than want­ing to go back to the yes­ter­days that never were in the time of god rea­gan. But the whole who is the bet­ter Amer­i­can crap can take a walk.….a long walk off a short pier. Got to take that jab, just got to do it. Screw the whole I’m a bet­ter Amer­i­can bull­shit. I’m sick of it why are you a bet­ter Amer­i­can Jon? Because you are white? Because you are a Repub­li­can? You sure as hell are not a reborn so it sucks to be you in many regions as well.

    Why can they just not run with out the barbs? I’m so damned tired of them and those that seem to think they have to do it. Grow a set and tell us jut exactly what it is you would do to get us out of this mess and more of what got us iinto it is not the cor­rect answer.… G O N G I’m sorry sir you have two answers left.…..care to make a call to a friend that has a frick­ing clue?

  8. Hmmmm I won­der if Gov Christy has charged the Hunts­man for the use of Lib­erty State park and all the extra hours state work­ers had to spend because of the event? Beau­ti­ful park in some ways and I would recomend the old train sta­tion as a must visit. Love that old build­ing and all those train tracks of a pro­duc­tive time gone by before some in this coun­try decided they could make more money push­ing roads and gas con­sump­tion. Now then we did have pas­sen­ger rail. Right up the street from where this pic­ture was taken is a won­der­ful light rail sys­tem that I sus­pect Repub­li­cans would love to kill but then so too are numer­ous high­way arter­ies that a Repub­li­can kicked into motion. But once we had actual Repub­li­can leaders.

  9. Fili said: 22% of Amer­i­cans say they would not vote for a Mor­mon pres­i­den­tial candidate.

    That same poll also said 27% of Democ­rats would not vote for a Mor­mon. It’ stun­ning that more than 1 in 4 Democ­rats would dis­crim­i­nate based on one’s reli­gious affil­i­a­tion. And they’re sup­pos­edly the party of acceptance.

    I won­der what per­cent of Democ­rats wouldn’t vote for a Muslim.

  10. Michael said: If you were born in Ja­maica, and moved to the United States, are you an “African-​​​​American”?

    I remem­ber an inter­view with Grant Fuhr in which the inter­viewer referred to him as an “African-​​American”. Fuhr imme­di­ately cut him off and said “I’m not African and I’m not Amer­i­can. I’m Canadian”.

    Micael said: I won­der what per­cent of Re­pub­li­cans would say that they’d never vote for an African-​​​​American.

    I won­der what per­cent of Democ­rats would say that they’d never vote for an African-​​American.

  11. GROG,

    I’m not sure what’s going on in that poll. It could be that the poll results are being pol­luted by the per­cep­tion that Mor­mons only seem to appear in the GOP, so the poll respon­dents feel like they’re being asked whether they’d vote for a Republican.

    Here’s another odd­ity in that poll: the unwill­ing­ness to vote for a Mor­mon is also high­est among the 18–34 year old bracket. Those are the peo­ple usu­ally most recep­tive to diversity.

  12. @SC,

    Good point.

    If the per­cep­tion is that most red­heads are Repub­li­cans, many Democ­rats would prob­a­bly say they would never vote for a red­head. And vice versa.

  13. SC, Grog you both may be onto some thing with the per­cep­tion indi­vid­u­als have about other groups and regional iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Just recently I was at a cook out and the ques­tion was asked to a cou­ple of the group that are quite active Democ­rats if they could see them­selves vot­ing for any one again from the deep South. The answer was no. When reminded that they had most likely voted for Clin­ton and prob­a­bly Gore we were told that that had been when there were still actual Democ­rats in the South. So there is a regional bias as well and one not nec­es­sar­ily built on any thing more sub­stan­tial than the con­sept that all Mor­mons are Repub­li­cans. Odd in some ways now that I think of it. The poll show­ing sim­i­lar results with young peo­ple does puz­zle me though.

  14. Dang I just real­ized I mis­s­read the end of Huntsman’s com­ment. He did not go down the bet­ter Amer­i­can road in fact just the opposite.……D O H. My Bad.

  15. LOL Mainer… I was pretty sure you had mis­read that, but you were on such a fab­u­lous rant, I hated to get in your way. :-)

    And while your fury may have been mis­di­rected at poor Jon Hunts­man, it was entirely appro­pri­ate for the rest of the GOP field who appar­ently have no trou­ble say­ing peo­ple are “bet­ter Amer­i­cans” if they embrace a cer­tain ide­ol­ogy… and that really is despicable.

    BTW… have I ever men­tioned that I think you’re the salt of the earth? I really do.

  18. Word is he throws large amounts of filthy lucre her way and is con­stantly buy­ing her shiny trin­kets and baubles. All in exchange for the occas­sional kissy-​​face. Shocking!

  19. @Gator… and is con­stantly buy­ing her shiny trin­kets and baubles.

    Gator… that’s not all.

    I don’t know if there’s any truth to this… the story’s just break­ing hard right now… but I hear from a reli­able source that he has been seen in pub­lic kiss­ing her toes.

    EEWWW!!!

  21. fil­istro, it’s just that Sarah can make more of a dif­fer­ence by not being on the bus tour. It was so con­fin­ing, She’s advanc­ing to the rear. It’s a strate­gic regroup­ing. She got rap­tured up to Alaska. Besides, since the lamestream media lost inter­est, she can make a big­ger splash by end­ing the tour. Now, THAT’S news.

  22. dc… I think Palin, with her usual keen grasp of polit­i­cal real­ity, has made a very per­spi­ca­cious obser­va­tion… only dead fish ride around in painted buses.

  23. @fili and DC,

    Sorry to burst your bub­ble and damper your gid­di­ness, but it appears Palin had jury duty.

    Now the far left can go back to wor­ry­ing about things like unem­ploy­ment, wars, debt, the hous­ing cri­sis, deficits, gas prices, food prices, energy prices, and Obama’s 43% Gallup approval rating.

  24. @ GROG… Jury duty! Who puts the task of sav­ing the nation on hold for jury duty!

    You think when Paul Revere was rid­ing’ around through all those towns, ringin’ his bell and shootin’ his mus­ket to warn the British that Amer­i­cans weren’t gonna let any­body take their guns away… you think he would have got down off his horse and reported for JURY DUTY?

    Patri­ots don’t go with the flow. Only dead fish report for jury duty.

    Oh, how I love that woman. It’s like she exists for the sole pur­pose of keep­ing me richly enter­tained. And I do appre­ci­ate it. I really do. :lol: