"California is spending $60 million" on its Feb. 5 primary, Mower said. Huntsman believes Utah, combined with surrounding states, will provide a "regional campaign," and that will bring in major candidates.

Like former GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt, who actually traveled to surrounding state legislatures in 1999 trying to get them to sign up for a Western states presidential primary in early March that election season, Huntsman wants Utah and its Western neighbors to have some kind of positive impact in the presidential election.

Utah put aside $700,000 in 2000 for that local primary, even though it was only joined by two other states. However, just before the early March vote here, the major challengers to the front-runners in both parties dropped out.

Utah had only a 10 percent voter turnout in the 2000 presidential primary election, which turned out to be basically meaningless, since even earlier primaries had picked the party nominees.

Utah didn't hold a presidential primary election in 2004 — President Bush was clearly the GOP nominee, and the Republican-controlled Utah Legislature didn't want to spend any money to help state Democrats hold a primary. Democrats organized their own primary that year, spending around $50,000 putting it on.

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