GOP selects Huntsman, Karras

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 9, 2004 | by Bob Bernick Jr.

They also killed a proposed party constitutional change that would have allowed future delegates to call back the two finalists and have one last head-to-head vote to see if one could get 60 percent of the vote and avoid a primary.

Delegates didn't even debate a proposed constitutional change that would have opened the now closed GOP primaries to unaffiliated voters -- those that belong to no political party.

Two final notes:

-- Huntsman gets the best endorsement award. Former President George H.W. Bush, in Huntsman's pre-speech video, asked Utah delegates to vote for his former ambassador to Singapore. Huntsman can be trusted, Bush said. Huntsman aides said the ex-president was approached by Jon Huntsman Sr. late last year at a Texas chemical convention, where the elder Bush was the main speaker, and asked to endorse Huntsman's son. Bush agreed.

-- And Enid Greene, Karras' running mate, got the biggest laugh. Driven from the 2nd Congressional seat in 1996 after her ex-husband, Joe Waldholtz, brought political and personal scandal to the then- D.C. power couple, Greene told the convention: "I chose the wrong man once. I'm not about to do it again."

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com; spang@desnews.com