At 12:15 p.m. today in Greenville, S.C., Jon Huntsman will receive an endorsement from the family of the late former governor Carroll Campbell, CNN’s Peter Hamby reports:
Huntsman had already secured the backing of Campbell’s son Mike, a former candidate for lieutenant governor who chaired Mike Huckabee’s South Carolina primary campaign in 2008. CNN has learned that Huntsman will also pick up the support of Mike’s brother, former congressional candidate Carroll Campbell III, and his mother, former first lady Iris Campbell, at an afternoon event in Greenville, a city that blossomed after Gov. Campbell recruited a BMW plant and other businesses to the region in the late 1980s.
Bob McAlister, Campbell’s former chief of staff, also plans to endorse Huntsman.
Campbell helped revitalize the South Carolina Republican Party during a long political career that culminated in two terms as governor from 1987 to 1995. He died of a heart attack in 2005.
The influence of the Campbell name has waned somewhat in recent election cycles, but the family’s stamp of approval lends Huntsman a veneer of credibility in an early primary state that’s key to his nomination strategy.