But the idea of two Huntsmans for the price of one in the governor's office is a little unsettling.
We've been there before, even if we didn't know it. And the queasy feeling left over from another Utah dynasty - the Leavitts - still lingers. It's called whirling disease.
The governor and his father insist there's no Capitol Hill puppet show. They would consider comparisons to another political family rude. And yet the similarities between Utah's 14th and 16th governors are undeniable.
Both Mike Leavitt and Jon Huntsman Jr.'s political careers were mapped out by their hard-driving, Republican fathers. They swept into office with limited political experience but influential names. And on that first election night, they simultaneously satisfied their elders' frustrated political aspirations and silenced pesky questions about nepotism.
Silver spoons no longer mattered at that point. But family dinners did.
He's dropped the "Jr." on press releases, but the governor still clings to those family ties. Senior was everywhere on the campaign trail. He routinely scores front-row seats to Inauguration and the State of the State - and an occasional mention in the speeches themselves. He's been in the office once, just to look around. Still, he's only a phone call away. And Junior picks up that phone a lot.
That's all to be expected between a loving father and son.
Father and son Leavitt also are close. The former state senator from Cedar City still advises the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary.
Again, that's to be expected, even encouraged.
But when family togetherness outside the governor's office mixes with conflicts of interest within, genealogy becomes less touching and more troubling. The Leavitt family - including big brother Governor Mike and the state agencies and boards that indirectly helped the family's businesses - never seemed to get that.
Throughout Leavitt's 11 years in office he was dogged with legitimate questions about favors for his father, brothers and the family businesses - an insurance company, fisheries, hunting lodge and, most recently, college apartments.
Each twisted trail usually led back to the Road Creek Ranch, which Leavitt owned with his siblings and parents. The lodge was too close to a school, but state watchdogs granted a liquor license anyway. It's one of few places in the state where year-round pheasant hunting was allowed. And the Loa retreat was the family's link to whirling disease - a deadly parasite in trout that many anglers blame the former governor for spreading. The family has since distanced itself from those operations.
The potential for patronage in a Huntsman administration is more limited. Curing cancer, after all, is more benign than breeding sick fish.
Early signs of Senior's influence have faded. He interviewed Junior's first prospective chief of staff - albeit briefly. Although his spacious building on the hill hosted Junior's early transition-team meetings and summits, that practice seems to have stopped.
Huntsman family businesses are no longer headquartered in Utah. But the cancer center and foundation named after the patriarch are. This year, when Senior asked state lawmakers for a $10 million transfusion for the cancer center, Junior tried to stay out of it. Senior still ended up with more than he asked for - $14 million.
"It's something they are still cautious about, something they have reason to be cautious about," says Matthew Burbank, a University of Utah political science professor. "You don't want to put yourself in the position of looking like someone else is pulling the strings."
Most voters probably don't worry about Senior and Junior's hand-in-glove relationship. And when Junior's gig as governor makes Senior's shadow dwindle, they will care even less.
Still, with Senior officially retiring - he just sold the family business for nearly $10 billion - and devoting himself full-time to the state-owned cancer hospital and research labs, Junior's moral quandary could metastasize.
I hope the son's independent streak runs a little deeper this time.
walsh@sltrib.com
