Ex-Obama envoy enters race for White House

FORMER Utah governor Jon Huntsman has joined the Republican presidential contest, pledging to run a civil campaign and claiming that he and President Barack Obama both love the US but have different visions of its future.

Huntsman, who until this spring was Obama’s ambassador to China, entered the fight for the opposition nomination to take on Obama in 2012 at the same venue Ronald Reagan formally began his general election campaign in 1980.

Huntsman, an aide to Reagan who served in two other Republican administrations, had been expected to join the contest for months.