Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Thursday he wasn't playing political games by forcing reluctant lawmakers to deal with his request for $2 million to pay for emergency dental care for blind and disabled Utahns.

Republicans in the Utah Legislature used their majority status to prevent a vote on the governor's request during the lawmakers' marathon special session Wednesday, with the Senate refusing to even allow the legislation to be introduced.

Legislative leaders had warned Huntsman that he didn't have enough votes for the funding, but the governor chose to add it anyway to the agenda he set for the one-day special session.

Huntsman told reporters during the taping of his monthly news conference on KUED Channel 7 that if he made decisions "based upon a secure number of votes, we would never put anything forward."

The governor, who controls when special sessions are called and what goes on the agenda, bristled at any suggestion he was attempting to embarrass GOP lawmakers into supporting his proposal.

"Of course I'm not playing political games. That's not what I do," he said, adding that he "tried every which way to try to compromise to find a solution. It wasn't kind of all or nothing." In the end, he said, he thought there might be enough votes.

But even though lawmakers balked at the proposal, the governor declined to be critical.

"This is too serious an issue and it affects too many people in real terms to ever lay it at anyone's feet in political terms. I just refuse to do that," Huntsman said. Later, he refused to describe his decision to go forward as any kind of political victory.

Some Democrats suggested that supporting health-care funding for the poor made the governor look good no matter what the Legislature did. But Huntsman said that was looking at it in political terms.

"It's hard to say it's win-win when you actually know there are people out there suffering. To me that's not a win any way you look at it. There's still real human beings in need," he said in an interview after the taping.

Lawmakers "shouldn't have been surprised" they were asked to deal with the issue, the governor said. Despite the outcome, though, Huntsman said he still has a good relationship with legislators.

The decision by lawmakers to reject a proposed 3 percent pay raise for the governor and other state executives "may have been a symbolic vote," he said, adding that didn't matter to him because he would have given his salary increase to charity.

One item missing from the special session agenda was a plan for using the $70 million set aside during the 2006 Legislature for tax reform. Huntsman's "fairer, flatter" plan failed in the final hours of the session.

Huntsman had announced he'd bring lawmakers back to reconsider his plan but canceled a special session to deal with tax reform after millions of dollars in errors were discovered. Now, it appears likely nothing will happen until the 2007 Legislature meets in January.

"Right now, there's no interest on my part in calling a special session for tax reform," the governor said during the taping. He said he didn't "want to do anything prematurely. I want to do something based upon real numbers and ideas that are rock-solid."

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