GOP Candidate for President to Raise Funds at a La Jolla Home

The 2012 presidential campaign is coming to La Jolla on Sunday when former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman will hold a fundraiser at a home on Muirlands Vista Way. Huntsman announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in New Jersey on Tuesday.

Tickets for a two-hour reception are $1,000 per person, and a half-hour VIP reception is $2,500. The VIP reception will start at 4:30 p.m., and the general reception will start at 5 p.m., according to the invitation. Both receptions will be closed to the news media.

The fundraisers come four days before the end of the quarterly reporting period. Candidates are required to file fundraising reports for the second three months of the year with the Federal Election Commission by July 15. Those reports can be an early indication of a candidate’s viability.

Huntsman is among several presidential candidates aggressively fundraising as the quarter nears its end. He also has fundraisers scheduled Monday in downtown Los Angeles and Newport Beach.

When Huntsman declared his candidacy at a park in Jersey City facing the Statue of Liberty, he said, “We must make broad and bold changes to our tax code and regulatory policies, seize the lost opportunity of energy independence and re-establish what it means to be a teacher in society.”

Huntsman also pledged to “conduct this campaign on the high road.”

“I don't think you need to run down someone’s reputation in order to run for the office of president,” Huntsman said, going on to say that he respected his fellow Republican candidates and President Barack Obama.

“He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love,” Huntsman said.

In response to Huntsman’s announcement of his candidacy, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is also a Florida congresswoman, issued a statement claiming that Huntsman had “reversed himself on positions he took as governor,” “become a typical Mitt Romney-like politician whose ambition is more important than his principles” and “like every Republican running for president, Jon Huntsman offered no plan to improve our economy and create jobs.”

Tim Miller, the Huntsman campaign press secretary, told City News Service Wasserman Schultz’s “comments were a distortion of Governor Huntsman’s record and demonstrate that the DNC is scared of seeing him in a general election.”

“As governor, Jon Huntsman cut taxes, balanced budgets, passed free-market health care reform and created jobs,” Miller said. “That is the platform that he is running for president on.”

Huntsman was elected governor of Utah in 2004 and re-elected in 2008. He was appointed by Obama as ambassador to China in 2009, resigning April 30.

Huntsman, 51, was a White House staff assistant in the Reagan administration, deputy assistant secretary of commerce and ambassador to Singapore in the George H.W. Bush administration and deputy trade representative in the George W. Bush administration.

Huntsman also has worked as an executive with the Huntsman Corp., a chemical firm founded by his father.

City News Service contributed to this report.