Ex-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is running for president

Asa Hutchinson. Image via AP.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he’s running for President in 2024, offering himself as an alternative for Republicans ready to turn the party away from Donald Trump. “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.

Hutchinson told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview aired Sunday that he would make a formal announcement in April in Arkansas. “I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America and not simply appeal to our worst instincts,” he said.

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 likely benefit President Joe Biden’s chances in 2024.

“I have made a decision and my decision is I’m going to run for President of the United States,” Hutchinson said in the broadcast interview. Speaking of Trump, he said: “I don’t believe he should be the next leader of our country.”

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 and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are among those considering bids.

Hutchinson, 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.

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.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.