His wife is a very private person who does not like the public spotlight, Shurtleff said. She stays away from the campaign trail, as do their children. They have five children, three still in elementary school, and decided they didn't want their lives disrupted by the campaign.

Even as a youngster, though, Shurtleff was intrigued by politics. His earliest political memory is his parent's support of Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. Tuttle, his friend since grade school, remembers Shurtleff saying he was going to be president someday.

"I don't know if his thoughts have changed on that," Tuttle said. "I see him as a very passionate and sincere person in whatever he's doing. He's always been like that. Ever since I've known him, he always wanted to be a public figure."

Shurtleff had an early taste of political success when he was elected student body president at Brighton High School in 1975, his senior year. He was also a member of "The Buds," a group of friends that stayed together through college at Brigham Young University.

"We were just a bunch of friendly guys that palled around and tried to make girls laugh," Tuttle said. They performed in a barbershop quartet and played sports, including football and basketball.

Shurtleff went on to law school and then joined the U.S. Navy, where he served as a lawyer with the Judge Advocate General Corps for four years. After his military duty ended, he was an attorney in private practice in Southern California.

Getting involved in local politics in California convinced Shurtleff that he should run for office. That meant moving back home to Utah, where he first spent four years as an assistant attorney general for the state and two years as a deputy county attorney.

Part of his duties then for the Attorney General's Office including lobbying lawmakers. That sparked interest in running for the Legislature, Shurtleff said, an ambition he was talked out of by friends who thought he could do more as a county commissioner.

"That's a lot different race, countywide versus one little district in Sandy. But I thought, 'Hey, why not try it?' " Shurtleff said. He toyed with running for county mayor four years ago but said his love of the law persuaded him to jump into the attorney general's race.

And just like the Boy Scout motto, he's already preparing himself for the next campaign — if there is one.

"There's never been a three-term attorney general. Everybody says in politics, it's timing. It depends on what opens up, what's available, who wins this time," he said. "It's tough convincing the family, the wife. We struggle . . . my job takes so much time away."