Huntsman vs. Romney

Paul Rolly, del Salt Lake Tribune, nos habla de la rivalidad personal y profesional entre Jon Huntsman y Mitt Romney. Esta se remonta a 2002.

(...) These two have gone at it before in one way or another, and if past exchanges are a clue, they really don’t seem to like each other much.

When Salt Lake City’s 2002 Winter Olympics bid committee was hit with an international bribery scandal while the city’s Winter Games preparations were still under way, committee head Tom Welch and his chief deputy Dave Johnson were dumped, so local community and government leaders needed a new honcho.

Romney, sired by Mormon royalty whose father George, the former Michigan governor, had been a presidential candidate, was chosen to right the ship. The Olympics were a great success and Romney used that experience to launch a successful bid for governor of Massachusetts and later a run for president in 2008.

But when Romney was selected, the Huntsman family publicly declared that he was part of a corrupt bargain.

Jon Huntsman Sr., the billionaire Utah philanthropist and father of the would-be presidential hopeful, publicly decried the pick at the time and said his son had been manipulated and deceived by the Utah king-makers, including then-Gov. Mike Leavitt.

Huntsman said the selection of Romney made it clear there was a deal between him and Leavitt from the beginning, but Jon Huntsman Jr., who already had impressive credentials as a former U.S. ambassador, had been asked to apply for the job just to give the appearance that there was an honest search.

Leavitt and the other leaders denied there was a secret deal with Romney, but the ice storm between the Huntsman and Romney camps was evident.

Later, when Romney was contemplating his 2008 presidential bid, Huntsman Jr. was a foreign affairs adviser to Romney. But when the Republican front-runners were set and the campaign began heating up, Huntsman, who had become the governor of Utah, was an early endorser of Romney foe John McCain, the senator from Arizona who eventually won the nomination.

Sources close to both camps told me at the time that Huntsman got an unfriendly call from his fellow Mormon Romney after he announced his endorsement of McCain, and was called an unprintable name. (...)