The Hill News

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) said he won't be taking sides in a potential home state primary between Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

Huntsman declared his intention to stay neutral if Chaffetz, his former chief of staff, decides to follow through with a primary challenge against the Senate veteran Hatch, who's endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) campaign.

"They're both terrific people," Huntsman told reporters in a gaggle en route to Newark from New Hampshire. "I know them well, and will leave it to the great people of Utah."

Huntsman launched his presidential campaign on Tuesday, and he didn't necessarily look to align himself with some of the more conservative elements of the Republican Party, who unseated a number of incumbent GOP senators in primary battles last year.

The upstart Tea Party movement fueled many of those conservative victories over establishment Republicans, including in Utah, where Mike Lee beat Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) in a primary battle at the state party's convention. Chaffetz is hoping to ride a wave of conservative dissatisfaction to a similar primary victory, should he decide to run. The third-term congressman has said he'll decide after Labor Day, and a poll on Monday suggested that Hatch faces trouble with Utah voters.

Huntsman is looking to run a more conventional campaign that doesn't necessarily focus the most intently on those Tea Party elements within the GOP. An endorsement of Chaffetz, for which there would have been little political cost, might have done that, and at the same time upset Hatch.

The former ambassador to China for President Obama refused to stake out additional especially conservative stances, declining to sign a no-new-taxes pledge sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform, and similarly passing on signing onto an anti-abortion rights pledge organized by the Susan B. Anthony List.