"The one thing we ask to be judged on is how the economy has improved. Four years from now, we'll look back and be glad we elected Jon Huntsman," says campaign manager and candidate spokesman Jason Chaffetz.

The electorate will render that verdict in four years. But the goals announced through the campaign won't be easy to achieve.

One of the biggest and toughest is Huntsman's pledge to eliminate the sales tax on food during the next four to five years. It is a tax cut that would affect all residents, but would be particularly beneficial to lower-income Utahns who spend the largest share of their budgets on staples.

The five-year window allows Huntsman wiggle room at the end of a first term to say he hasn't violated a campaign promise if cash registers still are ringing up a cut of the grocery bill for tax collectors. But, because he has proposed to phase out the tax on food, there should be some reductions to point to by the time he stands for re-election.

Also in the arena of taxes, Huntsman proposes to use "tax holidays" - reduced taxes for a limited time - to lure new companies to Utah or coax those already here to expand operations.

Huntsman also wants to eliminate the corporate tax on small businesses (those grossing less than $5 million) for their first five years of operation, and to expand tax credits for research and development.

The Huntsman Cos. executive and former U.S. ambassador proposes increasing government and private investment in economic development at the same time he is slashing taxes.

He proposes plowing $10 million to $12 million more in travel and tourism programs with the goal of bringing in an additional 5 million tourists. That influx, he calculates, will mean an extra $1.4 billion more to Utah businesses and pump more than $100 million into government coffers.

While economic development has been his primary focus during the yearlong campaign, Huntsman repeatedly has said that emphasis mostly is driven by the need to improve public education and accommodate a surge of 144,000 new students expected during the next 10 years.

At the same time, the self-styled moderate Republican has vowed to experiment with granting tax breaks to parents with children enrolled in private schools.

But Huntsman has been tough to pin down on the issue. In the early stages of the campaign, when he was battling for the votes of mostly conservative Republican Convention delegates, he said he supported a full-fledged tuition-tax credit bill that failed in the Legislature last winter. In later stages of the campaign, facing less ideological voters in a June primary and Tuesday's general election, he advocated a much more modest "experiment," based on the Carson Smith Special Needs bill aimed at granting tax breaks for the private school tuition of children with disabilities.

That is unlikely to satisfy lobby groups and legislators pressing for an across-the-board tuition tax credit bill.

"We are very supportive of the Carson Smith legislation. It's excellent," said Parents for Choice in Education spokeswoman Elisa Clements Peterson. "But we're hoping to see more than that. . . . We're hoping Governor Huntsman will be open to considering broad tuition-tax credit legislation."

Not so fast, says the Huntsman camp.

"Until we've figured out the economic equations, he will be very resistant to [a full-fledged tax credit bill]," said Chaffetz. "A limited test that creates an economic model that doesn't harm public education is a must."

A fight over tax credits could be Huntsman's first big test with the conservative Utah Legislature, which opens its annual session the third Monday of January, just two weeks after the new governor's swearing-in.

With Huntsman as governor, the 45-day lawmaking session could once again see an intense focus on "parental rights" and efforts to reform the state's child-welfare system, which Huntsman criticized during the campaign.

"We need to build the public's confidence in the Division of Child and Family Services," said Chaffetz. "But we have no idea what changes are in store there."

State workers could be in for salary increases during a Huntsman term, but they might have to increase productivity significantly to make it happen. The candidate has advocated a "flexible freeze" that would cap the number of public employees in many areas.

There will be no immediate action on Huntsman's call for moving the Utah State Prison, but he does promise to launch a yearlong feasibility study.

Huntsman proposes two reforms directly affecting state lawmakers, and they are almost sure to put the new chief executive at odds with the 104 lawmakers, many of them veterans of Capitol Hill.

Under his ethics reform package, Huntsman wants to impose a two-year "cooling off" period for officials and lawmakers retiring from government before they could become lobbyists. Another likely candidate for the dead-on-arrival pile is Huntsman's proposal to have a general session of the Legislature only once every other year, instead of annually, as is done currently. Under the Huntsman plan, lawmakers would meet for a 20-day budget-only session in the year between general sessions.

But lawmakers, always eager to strengthen their own hand in power struggles with the executive branch, are likely to be more welcoming of one Huntsman proposal. He wants to limit governors to two terms.