Why is Asa still in? Same reasons as in 1976

    Steve Brawner

To understand why Asa Hutchinson is still seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024 despite the numbers showing he’s probably not going to win, look to what he did in 1976, 1986 and 2006.

We’ll get to the history lesson shortly after first covering the news, which is that his presidential campaign recently announced it had raised $640,000 during the third quarter, and that he has $325,000 in the bank.

In contrast, the Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump, raised $24.5 million over that same time period.

Campaign fundraising both affects poll performance and mirrors it. Candidates must raise money to increase their poll numbers, but donors don’t like giving their money to candidates who aren’t going to win. Eventually a campaign enters a financial death spiral, and that’s when candidates know they have to quit. Hutchinson is not there yet, but he’s getting close. He consistently has polled no higher than 1 percent and did not qualify for the last debate. He has said he needs to poll at 4 percent in an early voting state by Thanksgiving. If not, he’ll “re-evaluate where we are.”

Why would Hutchinson stay in the race given that he’s never polled high and isn’t raising much money? His history provides a clue.

When he first got into politics, Arkansas had been dominated by Democrats for a century. Undaunted, he ran for the Benton County Quorum Court in 1976 and lost. He ran for prosecuting attorney two years later and lost again.

He kept plugging along. In 1986, he ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Sen. Dale Bumpers and lost with 38 percent of the vote. Four years later, he challenged incumbent Attorney General Winston Bryant and lost again with 45 percent.

By then, Arkansas was not quite so Democratic-dominated, in part because Hutchinson and others like him had kept putting their names on the ballot. His home 3rd Congressional District in Northwest Arkansas had been represented for years by a Republican, John Paul Hammerschmidt, and then by Hutchinson’s brother, Tim Hutchinson.

In 1996, Asa was elected to Congress in that district while Tim beat Bryant and was elected to the Senate.

Asa would be re-elected to Congress in 1998 and 2000. He then would serve as President George W. Bush’s Drug Enforcement Administration director and then as under secretary for border and transportation security.

He came back to Arkansas and ran again for governor in 2006 — and again he lost, this time to Mike Beebe, managing less than 41 percent of the vote.

But the 2014 governor’s race was a different story. For the first time in four tries, Hutchinson entered a statewide race with the political currents favoring him. He won 55 percent of the vote against the Democrat, Mike Ross.

At that point, the Republican Party that Hutchinson had been helping build since 1976 was becoming Arkansas’ dominant party. Personally, he had reached the top of Arkansas politics. It only took 38 years of losing more often than winning for that to happen.

Which brings us back to 2024, when Hutchinson again is trying to achieve those same two goals. One is build a party or, more accurately, change it to reflect the restrained, pragmatic conservative GOP of his younger years. Then, it was led and personified by President Ronald Reagan. Currently, it’s the party of Trump, whom Hutchinson opposes.

The other goal he’s trying again to achieve is win an election, and again he’s swimming against the prevailing political currents. The difference is that in 1976 he was 25 and had time on his side for the currents to shift. Now he is 72.

This is probably his last campaign. Given his history, it’s not surprising that he’s still in the race. If he decides he can’t win, he can still try to achieve his other goal: help change the party by dropping out and endorsing the Reagan Republican who might beat Trump.

We’ll see what happens around Thanksgiving.

••• Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 14 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.