LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Asa Hutchinson, who spent two terms as governor of Arkansas, will seek the Republican presidential nomination, positioning himself as an alternative to Donald Trump just days after the former president was indicted by a grand jury in New York.
In an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Hutchinson said Trump should drop out of the race, arguing “the office is more important than any individual person.”
“I’m running because I believe that I am the right time for America, the right candidate for our country and its future,” he said. “I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America and not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”
Hutchinson is the first Republican to announce a campaign after Trump became the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges. His candidacy will test the GOP’s appetite for those who speak out against Trump. Others who have criticized Trump, including former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, have opted against a campaign, sensing the difficulty of prevailing in a primary.
And in a sign of Trump’s continued grip on the Republican base, most in the party — even those considering challenging him for the nomination — have defended him against the New York indictment. That, at least for now, leaves Hutchinson as a distinct outlier among Republicans.
In addition to Trump, Hutchinson joins a Republican field that also includes former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to jump into the race in the summer, while U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence are among those considering bids.
Hutchinson, 72, left office in January after eight years as governor. He has ramped up his criticism of the former president in recent months, calling another Trump presidential nomination the “worst scenario” for Republicans and saying it will likely benefit President Joe Biden’s chances in 2024.
The former governor, who was term-limited, has been a fixture in Arkansas politics since the 1980s, when the state was predominantly Democratic. A former congressman, he was one of the House managers prosecuting the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton.
Hutchinson served as President George W. Bush’s head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and was an undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
As governor, Hutchinson championed a series of income tax cuts as the state’s budget surpluses grew. He signed several abortion restrictions into law, including a ban on the procedure that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year. Hutchinson, however, has said he regretted that the measure did not include exceptions for rape or incest.
Hutchinson earned the ire of Trump and social conservatives last year when he vetoed legislation banning gender-affirming medical care for children. Arkansas’ majority-Republican Legislature overrode Hutchinson’s veto and enacted the ban, which has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
Trump called Hutchinson a “RINO” — a Republican In Name Only — for the veto. Hutchinson’s successor, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has said she would have signed the legislation.
Hutchinson, who signed other restrictions on transgender youth into law, said the Arkansas ban went too far and that he would have signed the measure if it had focused only on surgery.
Hutchinson endorsed Sanders’ bid for governor.
Sanders hasn’t publicly endorsed Trump or anyone else yet in the 2024 presidential race. She has avoided direct criticism of her predecessor, even as she split from him on several policies.
Among the bills she’s signed since taking office is legislation intended to reinstate the ban on gender affirming care for minors that Hutchinson opposed by making it easier to sue providers of such care. She’s also dissolved five panels Hutchinson had formed to advise him on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying she wanted the state to focus on other health challenges.
Although he has supported Trump’s policies, Hutchinson has become increasingly critical of the former president’s rhetoric and lies about the 2020 presidential election. He said Trump’s call to terminate parts of the Constitution to overturn the election hurt the country.
Hutchinson also criticized Trump for meeting with white nationalist leader Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, who has praised Adolf Hitler and spewed antisemitic conspiracy theories. Hutchinson has contrasted that meeting to his own background as a U.S. attorney who prosecuted white supremacists in Arkansas in the 1980s.
An opponent of the federal health care law, Hutchinson after taking office supported keeping Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion. But he championed a work requirement for the law that was blocked by a federal judge.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hutchinson tried to push back against misinformation about the virus with daily news conferences and a series of town halls he held around the state aimed at encouraging people to get vaccinated.
Hutchinson infuriated death penalty opponents in 2017 when he ordered eight executions over a two-week period, scheduling them before one of the state’s lethal injection drugs was set to expire. The state ultimately carried out four of the executions.
The former governor is known more for talking policy than for fiery speeches, often flanked by charts and graphs at his news conferences at the state Capitol. Instead of picking fights on Twitter, he tweets out Bible verses every Sunday morning.
Hutchinson, who graduated from the evangelical college Bob Jones University in South Carolina, said in the ABC interview that he considers himself part of the evangelical community.
“I believe that the evangelical community understands that we need to have a leader that can distance themselves from some of the bad instincts that drive Mr. Trump,” he said. “And I hope that we can do that in the future.”
