OPINION

OPINION | REX NELSON: Pity the governor

I pity Gov. Asa Hutchinson. When being interviewed, this state's Republican governor puts on a brave face. He claims that the disastrous legislative session of 2021 wasn't all that bad. It's spin.

Hutchinson has been around a long time. Deep down, he must be as sad as I am about what has happened. There was a time when there were so few of us associated with Republican candidates in Arkansas that everyone knew each other on a first-name basis. I was a full-time employee in a Republican campaign in 1984. By then, Hutchinson, now 70, had made a name for himself as the youngest U.S. attorney in the country.

Hutchinson was appointed as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas by Ronald Reagan in 1982 and later received national recognition for investigating and prosecuting a group of extremists known as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord.

I first met Hutchinson in 1984. After returning to the newspaper business, I was among those who covered his 1986 race against U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers. Hutchinson received just 37.7 percent of the vote.

Always the good GOP soldier, Hutchinson ran unsuccessfully for Arkansas attorney general against Winston Bryant in 1990. After that race, he became co-chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party along with Sheffield Nelson and was later the lone chairman. Hutchinson was dedicated to building a two-party system in an era when Democrats controlled almost everything in Arkansas.

Hutchinson finally had a winning race for public office in 1996 when he was elected to Congress from the 3rd District of Arkansas. He was re-elected in 1998 and 2000, again receiving national attention as one of 13 House managers for the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in late 1998.

Hutchinson left Congress in August 2001 after being appointed by President George W. Bush to head the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was undersecretary for border and transportation security at the Department of Homeland Security from 2003-05.

Hutchinson again was the loyal soldier, coming home to Arkansas to run for governor against Mike Beebe in 2006. He was wiped out, getting just 40.7 percent of the vote.

Finally, Hutchinson's time would come in 2014 when he was elected to his first term as governor. The GOP takeover of state government had begun in 2010 and was largely complete by the end of that 2014 election cycle. Hutchinson would learn the hard way what fellow Republican Mike Huckabee discovered during more than 10 years as governor: The biggest headaches come from members of your own party.

Huckabee referred to these legislators as Shiite Republicans. I call them Arkansas Know Nothings. They're to this century what segregationist Democratic legislators were to the previous century: demagogic officeholders who appeal to the base instincts of their constituents; officeholders with no vision for the future of this state and no solutions to problems that have kept per capita incomes low for decades.

Some of them were failures in the private sector who now must use the meager legislative salary as their primary source of income.

They're like that guy we know back home: the loudmouth who shows up at the coffee shop early each morning and bores everyone with his views. In this case, we're letting those people run things.

Back when the GOP was struggling, it kept its filing fees low and begged anyone to run. With its focus simply on increasing the number of officeholders, the Arkansas GOP created a Frankenstein's monster. It failed to recruit quality candidates to defeat those coffee-shop loudmouths in the primary.

Four decades ago when Hutchinson was working to build the Arkansas GOP, these Know Nothings would have been Democrats. In those days, Republicans still believed in less, more efficient government. Know Nothings believe in more government, seeking solutions for things that aren't problems. They spent this year's session introducing bills that dealt with divisive social issues that aren't even the business of state government.

He won't say it, but Hutchinson knows that we desperately need legislators who will focus on the real business of state government--spending tax dollars wisely and making sure services are delivered efficiently. Instead, the coffee-shop loudmouths work to reduce the power of the governor even though Arkansas already has one of the weakest governor's offices in the country due to our 1874 Constitution.

At the time the state Constitution was drafted, former Confederates had all they could stand of Reconstruction-era governors and were thus determined to withhold power from the office. Not that the current Know Nothings would know anything about Arkansas history, of course.

Another factor at play is the ongoing loss of population and economic power in large swaths of rural Arkansas. This has led to a decline in the quality of officeholders.

Take El Dorado, now represented in the state Senate by Trent Garner, perhaps the most clownish character of them all. This was the city that once gave us our best lawmaker, Jodie Mahony.

Or consider the fact that another Know Nothing, state Sen. Gary Stubblefield, hails from Branch, which is right next to Charleston. That's the same Charleston that produced Bumpers.

From Mahony to Garner. From Bumpers to Stubblefield. That speaks volumes.

In his private moments, Hutchinson must weep when contemplating what has happened to the Arkansas GOP, once the party of Winthrop Rockefeller. I know I do.


Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

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