I live in Utah, and Jon Huntsman was our governor from 2004 to 2009. Nothing much seemed to really happen under his tenure; Huntsman didn't really mix it up too much with the overwhelmingly beet red legislature, and this was taken as a sign of him being an adult and above the pure wackiness that goes on here. However, two things he did do are cause for concern were his candidacy for president to take off.
FIRST, he signed a state-wide school voucher bill, despite heated protest from the teachers, the teachers' unions and the general public. This actually led to a referendum overturning that law (the referendum passed by a wide margin). It is true that Huntsman did not actually defend the law in the face of the referendum, but that doesn't change the fact that he did sign it into law. Charter schools have become a big business in Utah, some of them are run by those same beet red legislators, and they are effectively funded by what amounts to a voucher system - if a kid goes to a charter school, the state transfers a lump sum from the public school the kid would have attended to the charter school. I believe the voucher law would have merely increased the amount being sent to the charter schools, as well as private schools. (My daughter attends a private school, and I was against the voucher law, because the public schools in Utah are already seriously underfunded and class sizes are huge here. I'm not happy about sending her to a private school, but the LDS religion is so mixed into the public system that I felt she should not suffer that at least in her early years. She will go to a public high school, however.)
SECOND, he advocated and passed a flat tax on income. Utah did not have very progressive rates to begin with, and the newspaper reporting on the flat tax was awful, so people really didn't know very much about how it was going to effect them. As I recall, the first year allowed people to "opt in" to the flat tax, and the state provided a web-based calculator to compare your taxes under the prior rate and under the flat rate. I did this, and my taxes went up. Guess whose taxes went down? The flat tax was imposed on everyone after that first year and is still the law.
A relatively good recap of these two issues can be found here: Huntsman http://www.bostonherald.com/...
Both of these things - the two largest initiatives I can remember coming from Huntsman or at least tacitly endorsed by him - scare me. Can you imagine a flat tax in the USA? I know this is where republicans are headed, and it would be a disaster for the country. Same with school vouchers, as we see republican governors trying to turn the entire education system into essentially a profit making venture.
So, I say beware of Jon Huntsman. He scares me.