"That's not what he was thinking in that article," she said, moments after he addressed about fifty people at the Hillsborough County Republican headquarters in Brandon. "He was thinking maybe down the road ... It evolved, and as we've watched the country go through the steps that they've gone through in the last several months,that's evolved as well, so we are where we are."
As Esquire magazine details in its current issue, no political action committee or any fundraising efforts for his candidacy could begin for the former Utah Governor until he stepped down from his diplomatic post.
On January 31, about a month after the Newsweek story broke, Huntsman had decided he was all in for 2012, and announced that he would be leaving his role as ambassador at the end of April.
Having lived the past couple of years in China, CL asked Mrs. Huntsman if there was anything she could impart to Americans about what she learned living there?
"Right now, they have a better attitude, because for them, things are looking up," she said, reflecting on their economic ascendancy. But she said that the Chinese "learn a lot" by studying the U.S. "They
still look to us as the country that influences them the most. You realize that when you're living that far away."
Some political analysts have suggested that with his name recognition so low right now among Republican voters, the best Huntsman can expect out of this race is doing what Mitt Romney did in 2007-2008 - getting known nationally, which in the case of Romney has helped put him (for now) in the front-runner's seat this time around. Couldn't Huntsman be starting a campaign now that might truly reach fruition in 2016? Mary Kaye Huntsman says that's absurd.
"He's not doing that. He's doing it because he believes right now is the right time. It's a critical time right now (for the country)."
Mary Kaye Huntsman was born Mary Kaye Cooper. She grew up with her family in Orlando, attending Lake Como elementary school and Cherokee Junior High before her dad was transferred in his job to Utah, with the family following.
She met Jon Huntsman in high school in Salt Lake City. He briefly commented about meeting her while speaking in Brandon, saying, "She was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. It was that southern accent, it was the most exotic that I ever heard and it won me over. Years and years later, I finally got a date." adding that between him and his family members (they have seven children), "You're going to get tired of seeing Huntsmans, that’s all I can say."
Throughout his appearances on Saturday, Huntsman emphasized the importance of Florida, and the famed I-4 corridor. He says he will be an active participant in the straw poll that will take place in September in Orlando known as "Presidency 5." And as you might imagine, his wife is one of his strongest advocates, and assets in his campaign.
"He's the most undiscovered leader in America, and people will get to know him," she said of what's going to happen over the rest of 2011. "He's the real deal; he's authentic, he doesn't flip, he's just who he is."
Whether that will be enough to for a Florida Republican party that has gone decidedly further to the right over the past couple of years will be the question for Huntsman as he makes the winning over Sunshine State voters a cornerstone of his campaign.
On Saturday Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman made four different stops throughout the Tampa Bay area (you can read our report about his Hillsborough county visit here). It was an important visit, because he's banking on Florida being a major focus of his campaign. Of course, the last Republican presidential candidate to do so - Rudy Giuliani - as we all recall didn't fare so well with that strategy.
Unlike Giuliani, Huntsman isn't focusing exclusively on the Sunshine State to catapult him in the GOP primaries - he's also active in the early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina (but not Iowa). But he is doing something that no candidate based outside of Florida has seemingly ever done in a presidential run - base his campaign staff here, specifically in Orlando.
When asked by a Utah television reporter in Brandon on Saturday why Orlando, Huntsman said he needed to have a base on the east coast - and Orlando was ideal because it was the hometown of his wife, Mary Kaye Huntsman.
A Newsweek article in January quoting Huntsman as saying he might have one last run in him for office sent Washington political reporters into a frenzy about him possibly running for office this year, which had been considered off the table since he was at the time serving in China as President Obama's Ambassador there.
But Mary Kaye Huntsman tells CL that article was not her husband's official declaration that he would run in 2012.
