SALT LAKE CITY — GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr. said Friday he's not counting on getting any endorsements at the National Governors Association meeting.

At least not yet.

After touring a downtown advertising agency, Utah's former governor said he was meeting with some of the 32 governors participating in the NGA's annual meeting that continues through Sunday in Salt Lake City.

But he said he wasn't expecting any of them to endorse him here.

"That would be an inappropriate use of the NGA. This is about keeping the dialog open, reconnecting with old friends and making some news ones," Huntsman said. "Endorsements will follow. Give us time."

Huntsman, who stepped down as governor in 2009 to become U.S. ambassador to China, said he also plans to meet with the Chinese provincial leaders here for the NGA meeting and a U.S.-China trade conference.

His visit to Utah also includes meeting with potential donors.

Besides meeting "individually, just on the sidelines" with governors, Huntsman said he's here "because we have some events of our own with fundraisers. It's an opportunity for us to come together with kind of a core fundraising team, which just happened to overlap with the NGA."

Joined by his wife and daughter, Huntsman spent a few minutes chatting with employees of the Salt Lake creative services firm, StruckAxiom. That's the agency which produced the "Life Elevated" tourism branding campaign for the state while Huntsman was still governor.

Huntsman said President Obama has had two years to fix the economy and has failed. "We're a nation of 300-million people. The last jobs report in June registered a grand total of 18,000 jobs. Abysmal," he said.

He said Utah can be a great model for future job growth in America.
Pauline Ploquin, StruckAxiom's Chief Operating Officer, said she was honored that her firm was showcased by Mr. Huntsman. She said the agency has seen "triple-digit growth" and is hiring for its Salt Lake, Los Angeles and Portland offices.

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In his remarks, Huntsman said Utah can be a role model of sorts for the nation in terms of creating jobs.

"It's time that we look at what has happened in places like here in Utah", he said, "where we have reformed taxes, where we have streamlined regulatory policies, where we have made the state come to life from a competitive standpoint, where jobs were created.

"This state led the nation in terms of job creation. That's what we want in a Republican nominee," he continued. "We want somebody who's going to be able to go up against President Obama who actually has some credibility when it comes to job creation. This state has led the way."

While the StruckAxiom visit was private, he will make a public appearance Saturday at Plaza Cycle, 1379 W. 3300 South, at 2 p.m. following a motorcycle ride from the Harley-Davidson store in Salt Lake City.

Huntsman also addressed the recent talk in congress of a balanced budget amendment. It's a very important issue, he says.

"It's something that all the states but Vermont have in place. It helped to facilitate our work here as we would prepare a budget and present it to the legislature. It's a very important safeguard in terms of preventing runaway spending."

He admits though, it will take some time to make that happen.

Huntsman took a swing at his GOP rival, former Salt Lake Olympic leader and Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, telling reporters Utah was a leader in job creation but Massachusetts ranked 47th under Romney.

The former ambassador also dismissed polls in Utah that show him trailing Romney. Romney won an overwhelming 90 percent of the vote in Utah's 2008 GOP primary over the party's eventual nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

"First of all, Utah isn't an early primary state, so I don’t' think we should be obsessing too much over that," Huntsman said. More important, he said, is that polls show that if he were the party's nominee, he would beat President Barack Obama in Utah's 2012 general election.

Written by Lisa Riley Roche with contributions from Keith McCord.

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