NEWS - HUNTSMAN DEPARTS RACE

Huntsman departs race, impact in SC unclear

By THOMAS BEAUMONT and KASIE HUNT - Associated Press

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Days before the South Carolina primary, Jon Huntsman dropped out of the presidential race Monday and endorsed Mitt Romney for the party's nomination, becoming the latest Republican to call the GOP front-runner the strongest candidate to beat the Democratic incumbent.
"I believe it is now time for our party to unite around the candidate best equipped to defeat Barack Obama," Huntsman said at a news conference, his family by his side. "Despite our differences and the space between us on some of the issues, I believe that candidate is Governor Mitt Romney."
The development added to the aura of inevitability Romney has worked to create in South Carolina and the race at large.

But Huntsman's departure and endorsement of Romney seemed unlikely to clarify the overriding question of the Republican campaign: Whether conservative voters could or would unify behind Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry to create a strong conservative challenger to the former Massachusetts governor.
It also prompted at least one Perry backer to urge the Texas governor to abandon his bid in hopes of preventing conservative voters from dividing their support among several candidates and handing Romney a win.
"There are a lot of conservatives who were happy to see him get in and now who would be happy to see him get out," state Sen. Larry Grooms, an early Perry supporter, said. "When conservatives have split in the past, we end up nominating a moderate, and that's not good for our party."
In South Carolina, the eventual impact of the Huntsman endorsement is unclear.
He barely had a campaign organization here and he was all but broke, with big donors fleeing long ago. Huntsman, considered the moderate in the race because of his support for civil unions and other positions that don't sit well with the right flank, was in the low single digits in polls.
But anyone who had planned to vote for him is more likely to shift their votes to Romney rather than one of his more conservative rivals. Polls show Romney was most often the second choice of Huntsman backers. Both candidates have emphasized their business backgrounds and have espoused socially moderate positions in a state where social conservatives are an influential bloc. Both also are Mormons.
"Certainly, it will help Gov. Romney here, it's just not clear how much," said former state Attorney General Henry McMaster. An early Huntsman supporter, McMaster had not committed to another candidate after Huntsman's announcement.
Romney is leading in South Carolina polls - followed by Gingrich with Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul fighting for third and Perry trailing - as the front-runner pushes toward three straight victories after winning both Iowa and New Hampshire earlier this month. A South Carolina triumph would give Romney significant momentum heading into next-up Florida on Jan. 31, and he's banking on getting a boost from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Arizona Sen. John McCain, winner of the 2008 primary in a state that has voted for the eventual GOP since 1980.
With the primary looming Saturday, Romney's rivals dismissed Huntsman's endorsement.
"Moderates are backing moderates," Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said at a Columbia appearance. "No surprise there."
Gingrich, the former House speaker locked in a bitter battle with Romney, said at an event in Myrtle Beach: "Why would you want to nominate the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama?"
Huntsman's endorsement comes just two days after Santorum emerged as the consensus, if not unanimous, choice of a group of national Christian political activists who met over the weekend in a last-ditch effort to rally conservatives.
In recent days, pressure has been increasing on Perry, who registers in the single digits in polls here, to leave the race to allow South Carolina's influential social conservatives to unify behind either Santorum or Gingrich.
"It's important that we eventually consolidate this race," Santorum said Monday. But he stopped short of adding his voice to those suggesting Perry drop out, saying: "That's up to the candidates themselves to decide."
On Sunday, conservative author Eric Metaxas indirectly suggested Perry should quit the race while speaking at a packed prayer breakfast in Myrtle Beach. The night before he had tweeted: "Dear Gov. Perry: Do the right thing for your country; endorse Rick Santorum before the SC primary next Saturday...you'll wish you had."
Katon Dawson, Perry's South Carolina chairman, resisted the idea that there was a drumbeat for Perry to quit.
"I find it sort of offensive that some Republicans would tell us they want to hand pick the candidate before the election," Dawson said.
And Ralph Reed, founder of the national Faith and Freedom Coalition, also said he knew of no effort by the conservative leaders who met Saturday in Texas to urge Perry to quit.
"We have never asked any candidate to drop out of the race publicly or privately. And we will not do so," Reed said.
In Iowa two weeks ago, some evangelical pastors and conservative leaders had asked Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann to consider ending her campaign to allow a conservative to emerge. She did not, and Romney edged Santorum in Iowa by a razor-thin eight votes. She later quit the race.
With Perry showing no signs of departing, Santorum faces the added burden of a barrage of attack ads by an independent group that supports Romney's campaign. The group, Restore Our Future, was running almost $900,000 worth of advertising this week, more than any of the candidates' campaigns and all of it against Santorum.
Santorum complained Monday about the ads, which accuse him of having supported pork-barrel spending in Congress and supporting voting rights for felons. Santorum has defended his support for that spending. And he said Monday he supports allowing felons who have completed their sentences to apply to have their voting rights restored, a policy that is law in 48 states.
Restore Our Future spent roughly $3 million on similar anti-Gingrich ads in the final month of the Iowa campaign and was seen as contributing to his fourth-place finish in the caucuses.
A similar group that supports Gingrich was running roughly $850,000 in ads against Romney.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/01/16/2115781/huntsman-to-quit-gop-race-back.html#storylink=Afternoon%20Newsletter#storylink=cpy

NEWS - HUNTSMAN TRIES TO SHED 'MODERATE' LABEL

Friday, Nov. 04, 2011

Elections 2012

Huntsman tries to shed ‘moderate’ label

 

By GINA SMITH

Jon Huntsman’s S.C. advisers are pushing back on the “moderate” label that has dogged the former Utah governor in his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.
“We have a story to tell about Huntsman that hasn’t been told yet,” Richard Quinn, a S.C. adviser to Huntsman, said Thursday as Huntsman shook hands and ate barbeque at a Columbia restaurant.
The Columbia stop marked the second day of a three-day swing by Huntsman through South Carolina, an important early-voting state that holds its GOP primary on Jan. 21.

S.C. politicos increasingly agree the S.C. race will come down to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who consistently has finished in the top two in S.C. polls, and a “non-Romney” candidate, likely to be someone further to the political right of Romney.
That means a new narrative is needed for Huntsman who, rightly or wrongly, has been labeled as a moderate by many S.C. voters because of his stint as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, his support for same-sex civil unions and his belief in global warming.
For example, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley has singled Huntsman out as a candidate that she would not endorse, saying he was not a “strong conservative.”
Huntsman has not broken out of the low single digits in any S.C. poll.
“He got branded early as a moderate,” said Quinn, who helped Republican nominee John McCain win the state’s primary in 2008. “A lot of that has to do with Obama. Obama tried to destroy him with hugs and kisses. ... The other candidates caught on and have chimed in too.”
Huntsman stopped short of denying the moderate label during his Columbia visit Thursday. Instead, he called himself a “mainstream conservative,” pointing to his pro-life record, support of the Second Amendment and passage of a school voucher bill while he was Utah governor as proof of his conservative credentials.
“People will find out themselves that I have a conservative governing record,” Huntsman said. “You can’t just throw a moderate tag out when you’ve been elected twice in a state of Utah. ... That is a very conservative state.”

NEWS - HUNTSMAN ENTERS SOUTH CAROLINA GOP CONTEST

Thursday, Jun. 23, 2011

Huntsman enters S.C. GOP contest

By JOHN O’CONNOR 

A day after asking U.S. voters to give his record a long look, former U.S. ambassador to China and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman officially entered the 2012 S.C. Republican presidential primary race Wednesday.
Huntsman, 51, pitched his business experience with his family’s chemical company, noted his foreign policy credentials and argued Utah led the country in economic growth during his time as governor.
He toured a Columbia grill manufacturer before heading to S.C. GOP headquarters to drop off his $35,000 filing fee and sign filing documents. He was accompanied by his wife, Mary Kaye, and four of their seven children.

“Tune into to what we’ve done as governor and who we are as people,” Huntsman told several dozen party activists, touting high-tech jobs, and his experience balancing Utah’s state budget and beefing up its reserve funds. “Some people run away from their record.”
Huntsman said it was “unacceptable” and “un-American” that the United States is less productive and less competitive than it used to be.
He enters a crowded Republican field – six candidates officially have filed in South Carolina – that could grow more crowded. Polls show Huntsman is largely unknown among voters, and that a significant portion of those who know him react unfavorably to the former governor.
Huntsman’s Wednesday appearance used the same location that former S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster used to announced his 2009 Republican gubernatorial campaign. McMaster’s consultant, Richard Quinn, is working for Huntsman, and the two candidates share much of the same message and imagery: statesman-like experience; a focus on economic development; and allegiance to the optimism of former President Ronald Reagan.
McMaster finished third in the 2010 S.C. GOP primary. How will Huntsman succeed where McMaster failed?
“The voters agreed with that message,” said McMaster, who traveled with Huntsman on Wednesday. “They chose another candidate. He clearly is uniquely qualified, uniquely experienced among all the very fine candidates, and I think the people of South Carolina will like him.”
Huntsman began trying to make those connections Wednesday, touching a key S.C. political issue by calling on President Barack Obama — Huntsman’s former boss when he was ambassador to China — to step into and oppose the National Labor Relations Board complaint against Boeing’s opening of a plant in North Charleston. The agency contends Boeing started the plant to escape unionized workers in Washington state.
S.C. Democrats painted Huntsman as a political moderate, which could spell trouble in a state highly influenced by the conservative Tea Party movement.
Huntsman’s faith also could be problematic in South Carolina. Like Mitt Romney, who finished fourth in the 2008 S.C. Republican presidential primary, Huntsman was raised a Mormon, a faith that has roused suspicion among evangelical Republican voters in the Palmetto State.
Huntsman said Wednesday that he is a Christian, adding spirituality is important. “I believe in God. … I’m very proud of my Mormon roots.”
Also Wednesday, the Washington, D.C.,-based Club for Growth released its assessment of Huntsman — complimenting his tax-cutting and tax-reform record but critical of his record in limiting budget growth. South Carolina has an active Club for Growth chapter, and much of its leadership loaned their support to the candidacies of Gov. Nikki Haley and former Gov. Mark Sanford.
“In the end, it is Gov. Huntsman’s spending record that is inexcusable,” the Club for Growth report concluded. “There is now widespread recognition that the next President must address the enormous threat posed by federal spending that threatens national bankruptcy. Huntsman’s failing grades on controlling state spending raise serious questions about whether he would be equal to that task.”
“If you do the math,” Huntsman said in response,” you’ll find the percentage of spending that went toward government actually decreased.”

NEWS - WOULD YOU VOTE FOR SOMEONE JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE LDS/MORMON ?

Would You Vote for Someone Just Because They’re Mormon?

Ashley Evanson - 2 days ago

Buzz about the 2012 presidential election is already in full swing. But with no real Republican front-runner, really, anyone is game. We’ve been hearing Mitt Romney’s name tossed around as a potential for a while now, but two weeks ago we started hearing another familiar name: Jon Huntsman.

While Huntsman doesn’t have the same national profile as Romney, he has gained status as the ambassador to China and might become more of a threat in the upcoming year. Can you imagine—TWO Mormons (gasp) both running for president?

Now, I understand my next thought doesn’t apply to every Mormon, BUT, I know of a lot of members who vote for politicians based on the fact that they, too, are LDS. And honestly, I know that I’ve been unjustifiably biased toward LDS politicians for the sole reason that we share a religion.

But what if Romney and Huntsman go head to head in 2012? Who will the Mormons vote for?! If their only choice was Romney, I bet a fair number of Mormons wouldn’t really give the other candidates a second thought. But throw Huntsman into the picture and we might actually have to do more research on each candidate’s stances. If they both end up running, it will be interesting to see how members react to the situation over the next two years. Do I sense a hint of BYU vs. Utah-style rivalry in the air?

there was a poll provided, im not saying which way i voted, but the numbers speak for themselves i think