WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — He was booed on the stage in Florida, grilled in Des Moines. And his campaign events are sparsely populated — generally speaking.
Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has had some rough days of late on the presidential campaign trail.
Still, the 72-year-old long shot soldiers on in his alternative to Trump kind of campaign.
“I look forward to campaigning here in Iowa over the next six months,” Hutchinson told the reporter gaggle following his difficult appearance at Friday’s Family Leadership Summit, an evangelical Christian-led cattle call of GOP presidential candidates in downtown Des Moines.
But will Hutchinson still be in the now-crowded field of presidential aspirants by the time Iowa’s caucuses officially launch the Republican Party’s nominating contest on January 15? That chances are not good, according to most pundits.
Let’s put it this way, oddsmakers don’t even list Hutchinson among the dozens of people — most of them not currently presidential candidates – listed in its betting lines. Former professional wrester and movie star Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson gets plus 20,000 odds, according to BetMGM Ontario. Hutchinson doesn’t show up.
That might be because the former governor is barely breathing in most of the polls.
While Hutchinson remains — for now — at 1 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics average of national polls, he hit zero in the most recent Economist/YouGov poll released earlier this month. Hutchinson found himself at less than 1 percent in Monday’s I&I TIPP poll.
To be sure, he’s running ahead of confirmed GOP presidential candidates such as conservative talk show host Larry Elder and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, but they’re all just milling about at the back of the Republican primary line.
Here’s the difference: Burgum, a self-funding billionaire, has lots of money. Hutchinson doesn’t. Burgum reported $11.7 million raised in the second quarter, $10.2 million of that from a personal loan. Hutchinson has raised $743,000 over a longer period of time. Meanwhile, top GOP nomination contenders former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis raised a combined $185 million over the three-month period.
Hutchinson has had a rough week or so in particular. He ran into a buzz saw by the name of Tucker Carlson at the nationally watched event in Des Moines. He defended his 2021 veto that would have blocked sex change operations and treatments for children in Arkansas.
His position, that the Republican-passed law was unconstitutional and interfered with parental rights, didn’t sit well with the Christian conservative crowd. Former Fox News host Carlson hammered Hutchinson on the issue, and the two spent a few tense moments shouting over each other.
Then, Hutchinson, a vocal Trump critic, was heckled and booed at the Turning Point Action conference in West Palm Beach, FL over the weekend. It wasn’t pretty. The crowd began chanting, “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Asked about his tussle with Carlson over his transgender care veto, Hutchinson shrugged it off.
“There’s a lot of room to think here and, obviously, there’s a lot of room for disagreement,” he said. “I think that I gained the respect with that presentation, even with a difficult interviewer.”
But right now, Trump supporters see Hutchinson as a turncoat, another “RINO” establishment type. And voters leaning to other candidates or still undecided don’t seem to be seeing Hutchinson in the picture at all.
His sparsely attended campaign stop in Nevada, Iowa last week might just be an indicator of the long odds Hutchinson faces.
Thanks to Governor @AsaHutchinson for visiting Nevada and answering questions from voters today! #iacaucus pic.twitter.com/QyWKIaxkGv
— Brett Barker (@brettbarker) July 12, 2023
“I see you guys are still practicing social distancing and limiting crowd size,” one commenter snarked on Nevada Mayor Brett Barker’s tweeted photo of the small crowd.
And on Thursday, the New York Times published a story with the headline, “Asa Hutchinson is selling Bush-era Republicanism. Buyers Are Scarce.”
While he said it’s “important to have self-evaluation,” Hutchinson sounds like he’s in the fight for as long as he can.
The question is, how long is that?
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Asa Hutchinson” by Asa Hutchinson and “Clayton County with Gov. Kim Reynolds” by Asa Hutchinson.
