Does Jon Huntsman Think Bank of America is a Person? [UPDATED]

Jon Huntsman.Zhang Jun/Xinhua/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

[This post has been updated. See below.]

On Thursday night, Jon Huntsman made his 157th campaign stop in New Hampshire, at a National Guard armory turned rec center in the city of Newport. He noted this fact with the same ease and aplomb that he displayed when answering hours’ worth of questions lobbed at him by the audience. But Huntsman did bungle one question—and it was a telling one.

Near of the end of the event, Glenn Kaplan, 42, a cameraman and filmmaker, asked Huntsman if he supported the idea of “corporate personhood”—essentially, that Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have the same rights as people like you and I. “Will you support a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood?” Kaplan asked.

“On corporate what?” Huntsman replied.

“Personhood,” Kaplan said.

Huntsman looked uneasy. He said he’d only been asked this question once before: on the satirical Colbert Report. Then Huntsman gave his answer, which was, more or less: Mumble mumble…fix our broken tax policy…mumble mumble…revolving door…level the playing field…mumble mumble…thank you. He didn’t come with a cruise ship’s distance of answering Kaplan’s question. “It was a total cop-out,” Kaplan said afterward.

The belief that corporations are people is no small matter. You’ll remember in Iowa last fall Mitt Romney caused quite a stir when he said, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Democrats and progressives pounced on Romney’s remark as ammunition for their attacks on Romney as a candidate in corporate America’s pocket, a man bought and paid for by America’s 1 percenters. (It is true that 10 percent of America’s billionaires have given money to Romney’s campaign.)

In Newport, Kaplan specifically raised Romney’s belief that corporations are people when posing his question to Huntsman. And Kaplan’s mention of a constitutional amendment to roll back corporate personhood, which the Supreme Court furthered with its 2010 Citizens United decision, is especially timely. A coalition of good government groups and grassroots activists is ramping up efforts at the local and state level nationwide to demand that Congress pass legislation taming Citizens United. At the same, there are at least a half-dozen resolutions in Congress that would do just that. On the upcoming second anniversary of Citizens United, on January 20, a wave of events, including occupations of federal courts, are planned to demand an end to corporate personhood.

The fight against corporate personhood and Citizens United is shaping up to be the biggest fight in campaign finance. Jon Huntsman, it seems, can’t figure out whose side he’s on—Bank of America’s or yours.

[UPDATE]: At a Q-and-A Friday morning in Concord, the state capital, Huntsman clarified his position on corporate personhood. “Of course corporations are not people,” he said. “Who would say such an outlandish thing?”

 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate