At one-year mark, Huntsman is doing well
Bob Bernick Jr.
So how's he doing?
According to public opinion surveys conducted for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV by Dan Jones & Associates, Huntsman is doing well.
Most Utahns — 53 percent — give Huntsman a B for his first year; while a fifth — 21 percent — say he deserves an A, a new survey shows.
A November poll shows that 76 percent of Utahns approve of the job Huntsman is doing.
Utahns historically like to like their top elected officials, so Huntsman's numbers are not unheard of.
Still, considering most Utahns didn't know who exactly he was when he started his gubernatorial campaign in the fall of 2003, the governor has to be pleased with his public standing.
Huntsman says he's also feeling good about his first year in office.
All rookies make mistakes, however. And Huntsman's administration has its share.
In general, Huntsman's missteps came because he treated running a large government like running a large business — something he had some experience with in his various jobs inside the Huntsman family chemical empire.
In private business, if you are going to fire a few, or a lot, of people, you show up on a Friday afternoon, gather the folks together and give them the bad news. One of my family members who witnessed this process recalls that her former large employer then had the laid-off workers escorted from the building by armed security guards after the poor souls cleaned out their desks.
The act would have been no big deal in private industry.
But it seemed overly harsh by state government/political standards.
To add some insult to injury, Huntsman had to hire back some of the fired officials just to get by. The Morning News was told that after the 33 people walked out, gubernatorial top aides found out that more than a dozen travel writers were soon arriving in Utah, but no one knew who they were, when they were coming on a state-organized junket or how to shuttle them around to various widespread venues.
Oops.
Huntsman also got bad press over his summarily firing the state's consumer utility advocate, replacing the man with a former utility lobbyist.
But overall, Huntsman seems at ease in the role of governor. In part that's because Huntsman enjoys playing the everyman role. And he's accessible to citizens and legislators alike, if a bit standoffish by media standards.
The truth is, local media reporters came to be a bit spoiled.
Early in his tenure, former Gov. Mike Leavitt liked the give and take with the media. He would routinely return reporters' telephone calls personally. Leavitt was glib with the press and liked to see his name in the paper, his face on TV.
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