Obama is invited to Park City meeting of governors

President Barack Obama has yet to RSVP, but he's on the guest list for the Western Governors' Association meeting being held in Park City in June.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., the current WGA chairman, extended an invitation to the president in February during a meeting with Obama's staff in Washington, D.C.

"It's under consideration, but I don't know what the specific time frame for scheduling the president is," Huntsman spokeswoman Lisa Roskelley said. "We will wait for him to confirm."

The governor, she said, told White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett "that it would be beneficial if the president and certainly many of his Cabinet members as well were here to hear many of the critical issues facing the Western region."

The WGA is scheduled to meet June 14-16 at the Stein Erickson Lodge. Roskelley said the speakers and topics are still being set. Governors throughout the western United States and Canada are expected to attend, including possibly California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Park City has played host to Obama before, back in August 2007. The then-Democratic senator from Illinois had only planned on attending a fundraiser at a private home but ended up greeting hundreds of Utahns at a hastily organized rally outside the Park City Visitors Center in Kimball Junction. That was his only stop in Utah during the 2008 presidential campaign.

"Wow," Utah for Obama leader Misty Fowler said of the possibility the president might be coming back. "Of course it would great if he accepts and we get to see him in Utah again," she said.

Fowler said she didn't believe the president would be put off by Utah's strong GOP leanings. The state went for Republican John McCain last November, a candidate strongly supported by Huntsman.

"I can't believe being a Republican state would be a reason to reject it," Fowler said of the invitation to the president.

Roskelley agreed politics shouldn't play a role in whether Obama accepts or rejects the invitation from a GOP governor.

"The president of the United States is the president regardless of party affiliation. The Western Governors Association is a nonpartisan group."

Huntsman, however, is increasingly being seen nationally as a moderate candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He has said he will not seek a third term as governor.

Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, traveled to Utah most recently in May 2008 to hold party fundraisers, including one at the Deer Valley home of former Utah Olympic leader Mitt Romney. Romney ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination and is considered a likely contender in 2012.

E-MAIL: lisa@desnews.com