Politico’s Natalie Allison has a must-read piece out today on former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson’s “stubborn” 2024 presidential bid. She hits him with a blunt question about how his low-polling campaign might tarnish his legacy, “one that could have ended with a two-term governorship after a four-decade career in public service that began with being appointed U.S. attorney by former President Ronald Reagan.”
“You’re asking me about risk of embarrassment? People have risked their lives for the country,” Hutchinson said. “Am I supposed to worry about whether I’m going to be embarrassed in a contest, politically? I think our country is more important.
“I don’t want to turn our country or party over to Donald Trump or Joe Biden. That’s what I’m saying, and it actually reflects what the polls say in America.”
And that, Hutchinson maintains, is the reason he is subjecting himself to all of this: to last year’s worth of hotel room stays, and walking up to unsuspecting diners with wads of business cards, and speaking to seven people in a public library event room — as was the case a couple days earlier, when he held a town hall event in Plymouth, New Hampshire — and the general indignity of running for president with almost no one seeming to notice.
After leaving the diner that Thursday, Hutchinson was on to a larger affair, a crowd of 40 at the Portsmouth Rotary Club.
I’ll look out for Hutchinson when I head to Iowa and New Hampshire next month. As for nudging him to drop out? The editors already have that covered.