Huntsman, Shurtleff riding high in polls

Springmeyer gets only a third of his own party's vote, as of now. He trails badly in other voter preferences.

Shurtleff has been a national leader in prosecution of polygamist families where the man marries an underage girl — thus committing a sex crime.

He also has supporters among some liberal voters for his advocacy of hate crimes legislation, seeking to include homosexuals as a hate crime victim category, his sympathy with Utah Hispanics over a number of their issues, and other matters.

Shurtleff has the support of 89 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of the independents and 37 percent of Democrats, Jones found.

Huntsman and Springmeyer have mutual respect for each other — having met over the years in Huntsman's role in heading up a state planning committee and Springmeyer's work as a community and economic development expert.

Shurtleff's and Hill's interaction has been a bit more edgy.

Hill works as an attorney for the State Board of Education. In that role, Shurtleff deputized her to act on his office's behalf in certain areas.

But when Shurtleff gave a legal opinion saying the Legislature's two private school voucher bills were constitutional and one could proceed outside of a citizen referendum, Hill and another board attorney disagreed — giving conflicting legal advice to the board, which refused to implement the voucher program during a court challenge last summer.

Shurtleff "fired" Hill as his deputy, but she kept her job with the board. The Utah Supreme Court ruled in the board's favor and vouchers went down in defeat last November in a citizen referendum. Hill then decided to run against Shurtleff.

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