"The more states you put in it, the less you're going to see of any of these candidates," he said, citing the great distances between population centers in the West. "They'll pick a state or maybe two states, and they'll invest all of their resources there."

The price tag for the Utah primary is about $2.5 million, according to Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, whose office oversees elections in the state. The 2006 Legislature came up with about a third of that amount.

Daniel Kemmis, a senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West and a former Montana lawmaker, said more states should participate. Montana's legislature has rejected funding for a presidential primary in 2008 but is expected to consider the issue again.

The primary will help the region work more closely together, Kemmis said. He was a participant on the same symposium panel as the critics of the Western states primary, one intended to answer the question of whether the West had been overlooked by candidates.

"I don't think the Rockies can expect either presidential candidates or the rest of the country to take us seriously until we take ourselves seriously as a region," Kemmis said. The primary "should only be viewed as one element of a broader Western strategy."

Huntsman later dismissed the criticisms of the Western states primary, which has also been supported in the past with only limited success by former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer.

"It's just getting off the ground and to see the level of activity we've already seen — let the numbers speak for themselves," Huntsman said, citing visits already made to the state by Richardson, McCain and other hopefuls. "We're on the political map."

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