Utah GOP officeholders like to say they are pay-as-you-go fiscal conservatives. But Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is running part of his 2008 campaign on borrowed money.

And even though he's raised nearly $2 million since he took office in 2005, he still owes $200,000 in bank loans from his first campaign four years ago.

Huntsman has a $500,000 line of credit at Zions Bank. He used all $500,000 in his 2004 election — some went to his inauguration costs and other post-election purchases — and, as best as the newspaper can determine, has paid off just $300,000 of that since.

In June he borrowed another $70,000 from that Zions Bank credit line — leaving $230,000 that he could still borrow this year. His campaign has been paying interest on that fluctuating loan amount over the past four years, one-month hitting a high of $3,900, his campaign reports show.

"The governor has not been focusing on fundraising" for himself, said his spokeswoman, Lisa Roskelley, on Wednesday. In fact, he's actually been doing more fundraising for GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain than for himself this year, she added. "All the money (borrowed from Zions Bank) will be repaid in time. He's not interested in stockpiling money just to have it, not interested in getting donors to just give."

Despite some heavy fundraising in 2005 and 2006, Huntsman didn't pay back any of the loan's principal until December 2006, when his campaign wrote a $200,000 check to Zions Bank. He paid back another $100,000 last February.

Huntsman, who has already announced his second, four-year term would be his last as governor, has only $55,000 in cash currently in his campaign account, the latest finance report shows. And he has drained his political action committee of nearly $286,000 to pay campaign costs over the past two years. That PAC has only $7,000 in it now.

And while he's spent $394,000 on his race against Democrat Bob Springmeyer so far this year, campaign aides say Huntsman is looking to spend between $800,000 and $900,000 on his re-election. That means Huntsman could need around $400,000 over the next two months until Election Day.

In April he held a small get-together with Utah ski resort officials and raised $11,500 in one pop. He's held other small fundraisers as well. "His priority has not been fundraising, but governing the state and working for all Utahns," Roskelley said.

Don't worry. Huntsman's good for the money. He's proven himself a prodigious fundraiser, she said.