If Utahns elect Republican Jon Huntsman Jr., they would have a governor who did not receive a high school diploma — the first in a long, long time.
Huntsman did, however, graduate from college and has an impressive resume, including twice being named a U.S. ambassador.
Still, his teenage academic problems, brief as they were, are in sharp contrast to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Scott Matheson Jr., who did get a high school degree from East High School, graduated from Stanford University and Yale law school and was a Rhodes scholar — one of the highest academic accomplishments.
The latest Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows Huntsman leading Matheson by 10 percentage points. Utah has not elected a Democratic governor since Matheson's father — the late Scott M. Matheson — won re-election in 1980.
So Utah may well elect Huntsman to a four-year term Nov. 2, where as governor, he promises he would increase funding for public education and respect for teachers.
Huntsman says he "lost my focus" and "fell through the cracks" his senior year at Salt Lake City's Highland High School in 1978.
He basically dropped out of school and tried to get his diploma by attending an alternative home-study course that, in part, gave credit for working at a job.
"But I fell a credit or so short" of getting the number of credits required by the Salt Lake City School District for a high school diploma, he said this week from New York City, where he is attending a fund-raiser for his gubernatorial campaign sponsored, in part, by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Utah Jazz executive Dave Checketts, who is spearheading the new Major League Soccer franchise in Utah.
Huntsman said in his senior year he was playing keyboards in several rock 'n' roll bands at the time, as well as playing jazz piano, and high school wrongly fell out of his priorities. "My weekends were playing music," he said.
He righted himself, he says, over the summer of 1978 and entered the University of Utah that fall as a non-matriculated student.
U. officials confirm that it was not unusual for Utah residents to be allowed into the U. at that time on a non-matriculated basis — meaning the first quarter of class work did not count toward a degree, the student having to prove himself academically.
After a quarter of getting decent grades, the U. allowed him to enroll as a matriculated student, Huntsman said.
But he left in 1979 to serve a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Taiwan, where he learned Mandarin Chinese, which has served him well in being ambassador to Singapore during the administration of former President George H.W. Bush and a U.S. trade ambassador for the Far East for the younger President Bush.
Huntsman returned from his mission, attended the U. for several years, joined a fraternity and got married. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (where his father earned an MBA) in 1984, taking international business and Asian studies courses.
Huntsman received a bachelor of arts degree in political science in May 1987, University of Pennsylvania officials confirm.
Huntsman then went to work as a product manager for the family petro-chemicals business, which was just starting its meteoric rise. This month, Huntsman Chemical Corp., the largest privately held petro-chemicals firm in the world, announced it would go public sometime next year.
Company founder and philanthropist Jon Huntsman Sr. is one of Utah's few billionaires. Nine years after Huntsman Jr. was allowed into the U. on a non-matriculated basis, the Huntsman family started making large donations to the U., a practice it continues today in helping fund the Huntsman Cancer Institute and Hospital on the U.'s campus.
But those donations — now totaling more than $200 million — coming as they did after 1978, had nothing to do with Huntsman Jr.'s treatment as a student, says Fred Esplin, U. vice president for university relations.
And U. vice president for student affairs Barbara Snyder says how Huntsman Jr. was treated was an accepted procedure in 1978 for a Utah resident applying to enter the taxpayer-funded state university. A high school diploma was not required, she said, as the U. followed a "basically open enrollment process" for residents back then.
Huntsman Jr. says his teenage troubles made him stronger.
"I'm always mindful of those who struggle and fall through the cracks," he said. "I make an extra effort to help them. If you stumble and fall and pick yourself up. . . . That's what life's about. I'm stronger because I failed a time or two."
Huntsman said some may look at his rock 'n' roll bands, dropping out of high school, and wonder what happened to him. It had nothing to do with substance abuse, he said.
He said he was the junior class president but lost a bid for senior class president, then lost another student election, then drifted a bit. "I thought I was a loser. I lost my focus."
The night the Class of 1978 graduated from Highland High School, "I was actually working, trying to earn enough credits" to pick up his degree that summer. But it didn't happen.
Still, he ended up "doing very well in college, getting a degree, studying things I love — international business, politics and Asian studies."
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com