Huntsman returning tobacco firm's money

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s political action committee raised more than $43,000 in the last quarter of 2005, but he's returning $1,000 that came from a tobacco company.

"It slipped through the cracks," Huntsman's spokeswoman, Lisa Roskelley, said of the $1,000 contribution received in December from Altria Corp., the parent company of cigarette maker Philip Morris.

Roskelley said the governor, whose family established the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, has a policy of not taking tobacco money. "The governor spent years running a cancer institute. He doesn't take money from cancer-causing entities," she said.

However, the New York City-based Altria contributed before to Huntsman's PAC, the Governor's Special Initiatives Office, in July 2005. That contribution, also for $1,000, would be returned, too, Roskelley said.

Other Utah politicians have accepted money from Altria Corp., including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Hatch's campaign manager, Dave Hansen, has said Altria is "very diversified" as the parent company of Kraft foods as well as Philip Morris tobacco.

The contributions reported Thursday by the governor's PAC also included $20,000 from Usana Health Sciences, a Salt Lake City-based nutritional supplement firm. Roskelley said the governor walked through the firm's facilities recently and was happy to accept the donation.

Expenses for the PAC included $30,000 in consulting fees for Farbman Hopkins & Associates, a consulting firm that had not only handled fund-raising for the governor but also ran his Utah Policy Partnership, a privately funded group of advisers.

The consulting firm resigned both positions last fall after being criticized for taking on Envirocare as a client. The nuclear waste disposal facility in Tooele County was said to have hired the firm because of its close ties to the governor.

When the concerns surfaced, Huntsman said he would not approve an expansion being sought by Envirocare. The firm, whose contract with Envirocare was only to lobby in Washington, D.C., gave up a total of $16,000 a month in contracts with the governor.

Huntsman used nearly $12,000 of the money he raised this quarter to pay the interest on his campaign debt, Roskelley said. The governor, who was elected in 2004, has a campaign debt of about $500,000.

Thursday's filing with state elections officials shows that his PAC has raised a total of just over $644,000 so far, and, after expenditures, has nearly $28,000 on hand.

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