That was when Republican Party convention delegates advanced Jon Huntsman Jr. and Nolan Karras to the primary from a field of eight gubernatorial candidates. Now, many of the voucher supporters who endorsed Huntsman at the convention over third-place finisher Fred Lampropoulos are feeling buyer's remorse.
Parents for Choice in Education, the main support grid for vouchers, has been urging Gov. Huntsman to take the helm in their effort to convince voters in the referendum election that vouchers are good for them. But Huntsman has been slow to the punch, to say the least, and the voucher devotees have painfully watched their cause lag badly in opinion polls with the election just over a week away.
Huntsman, after months of sitting on the fence, even though he signed the two pro-voucher bills sent to him by the Legislature, finally agreed to participate with voucher supporters in a press conference Oct. 17, just three weeks before the election. He said he would vote for vouchers, but still urged his constituents to follow their conscience.
Voucher spin doctors edited his comments as best they could and now are using them in their latest TV ads. But if it turns out to be too little too late, they may blame Huntsman for not stepping up sooner.
Hark back to the Republican convention fight of 2004 when Lampropoulos emerged as the delegates' preferred leader for several months leading to the convention. Lampropoulos was the top voucher drumbeater among the candidates. He not only talked the talk, he opened his wallet and contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the cause. He also gave Parents for Choice in Education free office space at his campaign headquarters.
Huntsman, meanwhile, told delegates at many a chili-and-fruit-punch backyard meeting that he supported vouchers. But his comments were carefully crafted, coming with conditions and certainly not with the born-again zeal Lampropoulos offered.
As the convention neared, Huntsman grabbed the momentum and appeared likely to come out of the convention as the front-runner. The mystery was who would be the runner-up and also qualify for the primary.
The convention had an instant-runoff-voting system in which delegates listed on their ballots their candidate preferences from one to eight. The last-place finisher in each round would be dropped and his or her votes would be distributed to the others, based on the preference votes of that candidate's backers.
Lampropoulos held onto second place until the very end, when Gov. Olene Walker lost on the fifth ballot and most of her votes went to Karras, the other public education-backed (or anti-voucher) candidate. That, combined with the voucher promoters' move to Huntsman, led to Lampropoulos' elimination.
Three years later, the voucher folks are left with what many grumble is a half-hearted voucher supporter in the governor's office, not the tub-thumping evangelist that a Gov. Lampropoulos would have given them. While his supporters feel that Lampropoulos was stabbed in the back by the Huntsman-come-lately voucherites, Lampropoulos continues to donate to the cause, more than $100,000 to date.
There still could be consequences for Huntsman. Pro-voucher business leaders continue griping about the governor's tepid support - which might have been one reason he finally agreed to show up at the press conference - and have approached some former Republican gubernatorial candidates about a possible run in 2008.
Huntsman, after months of sitting on the fence, even though he signed the two pro-voucher bills sent to him by the Legislature, finally agreed to participate with voucher supporters in a press conference Oct. 17, just three weeks before the election. He said he would vote for vouchers, but still urged his constituents to follow their conscience.
