Who's the conservative?

Call Nolan Karras a moderate and he laughs, then says, "You might as well call me a liberal."

Jon Huntsman Jr. has a similar answer: A moderate? No way.

"I've been called everything from a Democrat to the radical right wing," said Huntsman. "I'm neither. I'm a Ronald Reagan Republican. Some may say that's the true conservative Republican. I'm fine with that."

After Saturday's state Republican convention, Hunts-

man and Karras will now face each other in a June 22 closed GOP primary. And some may wonder if two "moderates" came out of the convention, leaving the true conservatives behind.

For now, Gayle Ruzicka, head of Utah Eagle Forum and active in the party on local and national levels, says Huntsman and Karras are conservatives in her book.

"With Nolan we have a track record from years ago when he was speaker" of the Utah House, she said. "He certainly is a fiscal conservative. Huntsman has no such voting record, but he's sat in my living room and said the right things."

Only registered Republicans will be able to vote in the June primary, but the law allows any unaffiliated voter — one not registered in any other party — to register as a Republican at the polls and pick up a Republican ballot next month.

Thus, not only the hard-core, longtime Republicans can vote next month. Most Utahns can participate, as only a small percentage of voters are registered Democrats or some other party. And since Democrats have no major primaries, both Huntsman and Karras could conceivably score a few points with the voting public if they moved more to the middle.

But both men say the conservative suit fits fine.

There are some bellwether issues on which conservatives can measure either candidate and judge whether the suit is an exact fit:

Money matters

"By Utah standards, I'm not an ultraconservative," Karras said. "But I'm as conservative as any of these guys who ran" in the eight-member governor's race.

"I was the guy talking about the fact that Utah's budget has grown from $3 billion to $8 billion since 1992. We can't sustain that kind of spending growth. I'm the guy talking about our $2 billion in bonded indebtedness," says Karras, who as House speaker and finance chairman of the 2002 Winter Olympics, has put together multibillion-dollar budgets.

Huntsman said he worked in the Reagan White House and served as an ambassador in both Bush administrations. President Bush "is showing what being a conservative Republican is all about. I'm proud" to be categorized the same.