The family has poured more than $500,000 into federal elections - including the campaign of President Bush and various senators - in the past four years.
Huntsman, a lifelong Republican who worked on the Nixon White House staff, contributed exclusively to the GOP until 2000, when he also began writing sizeable checks to the Democratic Party.
Huntsman corporate and family donations since 2000 have totaled $298,500 to Republican political action committees and candidates and $215,000 to Democratic U.S. senators, according the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
The company also paid $320,000 for lobbying in 2000, according to center records.
Additionally, Huntsman played a big role in local politics. He was one of the top donors to former Gov. Mike Leavitt, now head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, with contributions of $150,000 during Leavitt's 11 years in office.
This year the state donations will go much higher as Jon Huntsman Jr. runs for Utah governor. Already, the family and company have kicked in more than $160,000 to the campaign. That is on top of some $470,000 donated and loaned to the effort by the candidate.
The latest campaign contributions, obviously, are personal. And a Huntsman spokesman said the same about the donations to Leavitt - that he was "a good friend" to the family.
Jon Huntsman Sr. insists the political spending on federal elections is all about finding a cure for cancer. He says he began sending Senate Democrats large checks because they were leading the effort for cancer-research funding more than Republicans. He also talks about spending lots of time in Washington, D.C., lobbying for his favorite cause.
"I kind of quit playing the political game years ago and said, 'My focus is to find people who will help with cancer.' And I know it bothered some Republicans," Huntsman says.
"I go back almost every month and lobby - I lobby hard for cancer. Max Baucus, who is a senator from Montana, every time Max sees me, he says, 'Here comes the cancer guy.'
But critics, among them Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Clean Air Trust, have attached other motives to Huntsman politicking, including a behind-the-scenes fight to protect producers of a gasoline additive that cleans the air but can contaminate water.
Huntsman is one of the nation's top three makers of the additive MTBE, along with Texas-based Lyondell Chemical and Texas Petrochemicals.
The Bush administration in 2001 quashed a proposed Environmental Protection Agency ban on MTBE, which the agency said posed "an unreasonable risk to the environment," according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
In the meantime, Republican leaders in Congress have pushed - so far unsuccessfully - to shield the industry from lawsuits by cities seeking billions of dollars in damages and cleanup costs. The legislative effort has been led by House Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, whose Houston district includes the offices of many of the affected companies.
The Huntsman company in a recent financial report said it has not been named as a defendant in any of the pending lawsuits but acknowledges that doesn't mean it will not be drawn into litigation. Tougher restrictions or a phased-in ban of MTBE, it said, could "result in a material loss in revenues or material costs or expenditures."
