Friday, January 05, 2007

You will recall that when Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. was elected as Utah's chief executive in 2004, he first defeated fellow Republican and former Speaker of the House Nolan Karras in the GOP primary.

Karras had strong support among the veteran Republican establishment, but Huntsman won on his name, charisma and money.

Now, however, it may seem that while Huntsman enjoys popularity as governor and gets to do all the honorary stuff, the Karras administration is needed to come in to make a tough decision or two.

Take the recent controversy over naming a replacement for House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander, who resigned from the Legislature to take an unpaid economic development appointment from Huntsman.

Chris Herrod and John Curtis were the two finalists in the voting by delegates in the Provo legislative district affected. Both names were sent to Huntsman to make a choice after neither obtained the necessary 60 percent of the delegate vote, even though Curtis actually outpolled Herrod by one vote.

But party insiders wanted Herrod and had campaigned for him, since Curtis actually ran against Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, as a Democrat in 2000.

Huntsman, in what could be described as an anti-Harry Truman moment, said he couldn't decide because the law required the party to send him one name, not two. The party insiders apparently forgot about that law, even though it was Utah County legislators who pushed for the legislation that changed the law.

So the solution was to have acting Republican State Chairwoman Enid Greene make the decision, even though there is no law authorizing that scenario either.

Greene made the decision, handing the job to the second-place finisher favored by the party insiders.

And Greene? Well she was Nolan Karras' lieutenant governor running mate in the primary loss to Huntsman and Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert in 2004.

Cheers,
Paul Rolly