tonight on "nightline," mormon moment. a megahit broadway musical and now two presidential candidates. how mormonism is going main stream. but is the country ready to elect a mormon commander in chief? dogs versus bears. in the wild scramble to keep bears out of the suburbs, wild life officers are turning to one incredible breed. but could these fearless dogs in fact be a bear's best friend? and, death race the most dangerous motorcycle race in the world. held every year on a british island where nothing stops the riders. not even death. >> announcer: from the global

resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," june 21st 2011. >> good evening, i'm bill weir. many americans knowledge of the mormon church may be limited to casual associations with salt lake city, polygamy or pairs of missionaries in neck times going door to door. but that may be about to change. you seep, mormons and mormonism are now front and center on several of the country's biggest stages, from broadway to the 2012 presidential campaign. jonathan karl got exclusive access to the newest face of the republican field and starts us there. >> reporter: with the statue of liberty over his shoulder, john huntsman made it official. >> i'm john huntsman, and i'm running for president of the united states. >> reporter: it's a different kind of campaign for a different kind of republican. no attacks on his opponents. no lashes out at obama care.

not even a single mention of the name barack obama. >> i don't think you need to run down someone's reputation in order to run for the office of president. >> reporter: huntsman may be the cycle's most exotic candidate. he was the most popular governor in america, but left that job to become barack obama's pick to be u.s. am bah gas door to china. he speaks chinese, not one, but two dialects. but he dropped out of high school to join a rock band. he's a successful businessman and son of the billionaire that invented those containers that big macs that used to come in. he loves moto cross, which explains the bizarre videos he released to lead up to today's announcement. >> a new vision for the country we love. >> reporter: in an exclusive interview, we asked about those ads. >> sometimes there isn't a lot of rhyme and reason to political ads that are thrown up. other than to get a little buzz. >> reporter: huntsman has seven

children. two of them adopted, one from bangladesh and one from china. he is raising his youngest daughter her native hindu. and he is mormon. he joined mitt romney in a republican primary field that now what two mormons. it's one of the fastest growing religions in america. 15 members of congress are mormon. including the leader of the senate. and huntsman predicts, as a political issue, his religion will be irrelevant. >> i don't think people see it through religious prism. i think they look at any of the candidates and say, where are they going what do they stand for what are they going to do with this country? >> reporter: but these days, pop come sure is bombarding the country with stereotypes. there's the award-winning musical "the book of mormon." ♪ i believe ♪ that god is on a planet called ♪ ♪ i believe ♪ that jesus has his own planet as well ♪ >> reporter: there's the popular

tlc reality show "sister wives." >> i think there's room for everybody. >> reporter: and its hbo dramatic equivalent "big love." the pop culture portrayals offer a twisted and distorted view. the church denounces polygamy, of course. a practice that is confined to a handful of extremist cuts. huntsman's bigger challenge is convincing republican primary voters that the man barack obama sent to china is a true conservative. he chose the setting of today's announcement to evoke mr. republican, ronald reagan, who launched his campaign against jimmy carter here in 1980. but reagan didn't try to play mr. nice guy. >> the carter record is a litany of despair, of broken promises, of sacred trusts abandoned and forgotten. >> reporter: as for huntsman, he has relatively kind worlds for the president he wants to replace. >> i respect the president of

the united states. he and i have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love. >> reporter: huntsman supports civil unions for seam sex is couples and support ed the work to curb global warming. and on afghanistan, he's staked out a position to the left of president obama. would you pull out the troops quicker? >> i haven't heard anything beyond the 2014 plan. i think we should expedite it. >> reporter: get american troops out faster? >> get them out faster. >> reporter: huntsman knows he has a lot of work to do. right now, most voters simply don't have any idea who he is. you think you're going to pull this off? you think you can win? >> of course. >> reporter: 1%, you got a long ways to go. >> i like your chances. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm jonathan karl in new hampshire. and coming up, it's dog versus bear. a clash right out of a jack london novel. but we'll introduce you to the real animals that might change

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depends largely on knowing which side you fall on. so, despite all the barking and snarling, the entire weight of evolution is behind the unwillingness of a dog, for example, to attack a bear. but one incredible species of dog does brave the tooth and claw of beasts many times their size, and tonight, dan harris catches them in action. >> go find that bear! get that bear! >> reporter: we are sprinting through a neighborhood in suburban seattle, chasing a bear. these wild life officers have with them three secret weapons that they're tracking on this gps device. they are specially trained dogs who are totally unafraid of bears who are five times their size. >> there's that bear. >> reporter: wow, there it is. >> there's that bear. >> reporter: you can see the dog right on the bear. a huge outline of the bear and three shadows of dogs right on his tail. incredible. look right there, you can see,

we got the briefest of shots of the bear on the run. we'll tell you how this hunt ends in a moment, but first, take a better look at our heros. this is the furry face of fearlessness. these are bear dogs, dogs bred for centuries over in finland to take on bears. in my family, we have a golden retriever who would faint if it saw a bear. what is it about this breed that they go for it? >> you know, it's just that ferocity and that genetics, really, of just hundreds and thousands of years of being bred to hunt these animals and those folks selecting for the most aggressive of those dogs. >> breaking news tonight. a bear hunt. >> reporter: but first, i should explain that these dogs are now helping the people of suburban seattle deal with a growing problem. bears on the loose. >> this black bear that was on the run was about 200 pounds. >> reporter: wild life officials here use the dogs to chase the bears up into a tree so the

bears can then be tranquilized. >> but finally, dropped out of the branches. >> reporter: once the bear is in captivity, wild life officials then release the animal back into the wild, using the dogs once again to scare the bear even more and also firing bean bags at the animal so the bear knows never to come back near people again. while this is no fun for the bears, it is definitely in their best interest, because, before this, bears were not set free, they were put down. i'm sure bears hate these dogs. >> yeah. >> reporter: and are not happy you have them. >> right. >> reporter: but in fact, it's better for the bears that you have these dogs. >> that's right. this hazing technique, adverse i've conditioning, trying to teach the bear bound rips. it's all our attempt at looking for an alternate solution to the bullet. >> reporter: here's the basic problem. technically, bears are not coming into human habitat, we

have moved into theirs. if you look around here, you get a sense of why this problem is happening. there are all these reasonably new houses right in the middle of what is definitely bear country. this is bear habitat. so, this is like, jackpot. >> absolutely. >> reporter: and once we move in, we humans often unwittingly entice bears, by leaving out food, in the garbage, for example. >> what this bear has done, it grabbed a bag, ran much to the cover and split the bag open and ate all the food. and that's what's left. >> reporter: wild life officials are now using the dogs to teach communities how to be bear smart. >> we don't want to kill bears. we want to save them. >> reporter: like, for came pl, not leaving out the garbage. of course, when you are teaching bear safety, you need somebody to play the bear. i don't feel like a bear right now. but now i do. i was told to try my best to be a convincing bear. i learned that bears do not do high fives.

who has doughnuts. >> please, don't film this. you are probably one of the worst bears i've ever had. i hate to tell you. >> reporter: they put me in a bear trap and when they let me out, kinds and the dogs got to scare me so i wouldn't come back. that was awesome. this is the best assignment i've had in a long time. this stuff is clearly fun, but it's very important. when humans and bears collide, both sides can get hurt. we met these bear cubs whose mother is believed to have been killed by humans. the set tharn is giving them a checkup before releasing them. these bear-hating dogs are actually helping their mortal enemy. and in the process, they are creating deep bonds with their human handlers, though, as we learned, they do not make ideal pets, because they need to run up to ten miles a day or they go stir crazy. you could not have a dog like this in an apartment in

manhattan? >> i would probably chew through the wall and end up outside. >> reporter: really? you said earlier that he chewed a bumper off of one of your cars? >> pretty much. he's take an lot of chrome and wiring out of vehicles, too. he's kind of like a troubled teenager. you love him because you have so much invested into him. >> reporter: and you can see that pay off when man and beast are on the hunt together. >> where is that bear? >> reporter: back to the chase we showed you earlier. after 30 minutes the dogs could not get the bear to scramble up a tree. so, he got away. he's really panting. coulter may have not caught his prey this time, but it's a safe bet that bear will not want to come back near people. he's saying, boss, i am done. for "nightline," this is dan he's saying, boss, i am done. for "nightline," this is dan harris, outside seattle. so i took my heartburn pill and some antacids. we're having mexican tonight, so another pill then?

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when you're racing, it's life. anything that happens before or after is just waiting. so says steve mcqueen's

character in a movie about a crazy endurance race in europe. well, tonight, we check out another crazy contest where racing is both life and shockingly often, death. here's simon mcgregor-wood. >> reporter: britain's isle of man. a sleepy island hideaway. for two weeks every year -- most dangerous motorcycle race in the world comes to town. it's called the tt, that's short for tourist trophy. but not every tourist survives this race on roads at speeds over 190 miles an hour. >> there's no room for error. the first year, you just go, ahh, and the second year, you can push a little bit more. in the third year, you know where you're going. >> reporter: mark miller comes every year. >> so, we are good to go. >> reporter: an hour before, the roads are closed.

time for lucky rituals. >> lucky socks. finally washed them last night. >> reporter: tension is etched on every face. they blast away at ten-second intervals. and in less than a mile, 180 miles an hour. >> it becomes more of a video game. it's such a blur. you think three, four corners ahead. you go so fast. >> reporter: the tt started back in 1907. history bred more history. new heroes replaced the old. the bikes got faster, the death toll has grown. over 220 killed so fast, but still, they return. >> it's like climbing mt. everest. the biggest challenge in motorcycle racing. >> reporter: this rider was very lucky indeed. where is the -- in the spine? wow. wow. so, they --

>> a lot of work on my arm. >> reporter: that's him, racing again this year. he does look a little bit mad. >> oh, they're all mad. they have to be. >> reporter: out on the circuit, mark took me to a place where the tt nearly took his life. >> i got thrown head first on my back and i see the trees through the lights go by. i think, there's a pole coming. i'm going to hit it. it's going to happen, now, now, now, now -- and i came to a stop and i'm like, i got away with something right there. >> we have a red flag situation. >> reporter: on this day, another race, another victim. a rider has crashed. the race is stopped. and the riders return. >> you all right? it was a big one. >> reporter: you came through it? >> yeah, just a little tiny piece of the motorcycle. not good. >> reporter: must be nerve-wracking for you. >> it is indeed.

you never know what's going to happen. it's like coming back from a war, you know? >> reporter: and then, the announcement everyone dreads. >> we regret to announce the death of derek brien. >> reporter: the third rider to die this year. despite the tragedy, the race restarts. there is a winner. there are smiles and trophies. it has always been this way at tt. this time next year, they'll be back again at the most dangerous motorcycle race in the world. for "nightline," i'm simon mcgregor-wood, on the isle of man. >> 180 miles an hour. thank you, simon. and thank you for watching abc news. we hope you check in on "good morning america," they will have the newest republican presidential candidate, john huntsman, live on the program tomorrow. and please check out tomorrow's primetime "nightline," the casey anthony story at 10:00. all the details on that rin