By KIRK JOHNSON of The New York Times
Published: March 13, 2009
Brian Nicholson for The New York Times
Speaker David Clark of the Utah House says the governor is “clearly on a new frontier.”
But the norms are dead for Republicans here, something that was in plain view this week as lawmakers overhauled the state’s formerly untouchable liquor law at the urging of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
The debate was about scrapping the state’s one-of-a-kind system of regulating bars and restaurants in a bid to boost the economy. But bound up in it was a profound, ongoing dialog, led by Mr. Huntsman, about what the Republican Party should be about and who should lead it.
Similar discussions are flickering in other parts of the country, especially in Republican-controlled state capitals, as party members sort through their losses from November and the rippling repercussions the recession has had on many of the premises they have stood for.
The soul-searching has also meant a star search for national party leaders. Some Republicans say that conservative politicians like Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the party’s vice-presidential nominee in November, will show the way forward, while others say the electoral map — and the formula for future Republican victories — was rewritten by President Obama’s election, and that a kind of casting call is now under way for new voices. Mr. Huntsman is firmly in the camp that says Republicans must turn the page.
“It’s like the world began in November,” Mr. Huntsman, 48, a moderate second-term Republican with billionaire roots, intense personal popularity and obvious national ambitions, said in an interview in his office here. “The old ethos world view — all that’s been decimated.”
Mr. Huntsman’s moderate views often put him out of step in his first term — and sometimes made him ineffective as well — with the deeply conservative Republican majorities in the State House and Senate.
But in the last six months, Mr. Huntsman has honed those differences to rapier sharpness as conservatives linked to the policies of former President George W. Bush have gone on the defensive.
In addition to leading the fight to change the liquor law, he has embraced President Obama’s stimulus plan, restated his support for a cap-and-trade system of carbon emissions and announced support for legislation that would provide civil unions for gay couples.
State legislative leaders have gone along with Mr. Huntsman part of the way — notably on overhauling the liquor law, which both houses approved on Thursday — and dug in their heels on much of the rest. But Mr. Huntsman’s message to his party has been unwavering: that practicality and real-world action, driven by changed circumstance, should be the measure of where the next generation of Republican leaders comes from.
The new Republican direction is not going to come out of Congress, he said, or “empty rhetoric,” but from a handful of Republican governors who must compete in a “meritocracy of ideas” that voters will sort out for themselves.
“The party will be well served by looking at some of these examples of success,” Mr. Huntsman said, “whether it’s Louisiana or Minnesota or Vermont or California, where things are being done.”
But as a mile-post marker on the Republican road less traveled in Utah, nothing comes close to Mr. Huntsman’s challenge to the culture-drenched restrictions on alcohol, which he attacked as anachronistic. Mr. Huntsman is a practicing Mormon, as are most state legislators, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the state’s dominant religion, advocates abstention from alcohol.
The old law, reflecting that view, required anyone who walked into a bar to first buy a membership card to the bar’s “private club,” which typically cost $10 to $15. Tourism and restaurant lobby groups complained for years, saying the law made the state seem unwelcoming to outsiders.
“One of our economic pillars is travel and tourism,” said Mr. Huntsman, whose family roots in Utah — and family fortune in the Huntman Corporation, a chemical manufacturer — made him prominent here long before he first ran for governor in 2004. “And if that’s going to be hampered by these jaded and old-fashioned views, then that’s going to impact the cash register and therefore our ability to fund the things that most citizens care deeply about, like our schools.”
Talk like that, at a time of economic pain and budget turmoil, gave the liquor proposal legs, and led to a compromise that would abolish the private club system while tightening rules intended to keep under-age drinkers out of the bars. It is the most sweeping overhaul of state alcohol law since the 1960s.
In the end, politicians in both parties say the economy probably played as big a role as the governor’s leadership.
“It’s been a kindler, gentler session,” said State Representative David Litvack, a Democrat from Salt Lake City and the minority leader in the House. “Where we are economically has made a big difference.”
But there are hints that Mr. Huntsman’s message of moderation, especially given his popularity in the state, is resonating beyond the Legislature and drawing support among the broader population.
In February, for example, when the governor announced that he would support civil unions for gay couples, many politicians here braced for a backlash.
Utah voters had approved an amendment to the State Constitution in 2004 banning same-sex marriage or anything that might approximate it, and one opinion poll by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research in January said 70 percent of Utahans still opposed civil unions.
But the backlash never developed. Indeed, after his announcement, a poll by Deseret News/KSL-TV found that two-thirds of respondents said their opinion of the governor had not changed or had become more positive because of his position on civil unions. Over all, the governor’s approval rating had barely budged, with 80 percent of residents saying they thought he was doing a good job.
Numbers like that could bolster Mr. Huntsman’s position in the next legislative fight with his party’s most conservative elements.
“I do not think the base of the Republican Party of Utah has traveled with the governor — at least not yet,” said State Representative David Clark, a Republican from Santa Clara and the speaker of the House. “He’s clearly on a new frontier.”
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