What Gov. Hutchinson and Jared Henderson have in common

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his Democratic opponent, Jared Henderson, have at least two things in common: They both started their political careers at young ages as heavy underdogs in statewide races, and they both have offered a big idea regarding education.

Hutchinson’s political career began in 1986 when, at age 35, he challenged the late two-term U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers, 61. Bumpers was a Democrat like almost all elected officials in Arkansas. Running as a Republican gave Hutchinson little chance to win a statewide race of any kind. But that was the party where he felt he belonged. He lost, 62-38 percent.

Four years later, Hutchinson ran another statewide race – this one against Democrat Winston Bryant for attorney general. Bryant had been lieutenant governor for a decade, mostly under then-Gov. Bill Clinton. Hutchinson lost, 55-45 percent

Hutchinson did not have a realistic chance of beating Bumpers. Beating Bryant would have been an upset.

What he really did was set himself up for future electoral success, when changes at the national level would benefit Arkansas Republicans, and when the state’s demographics would shift. (In other words, when enough old “yellow dog” Democrats died.) When Hutchinson’s brother, Tim, left his 3rd District U.S. House race to successfully run for the U.S. Senate, Hutchinson filled it for three terms. In 2006, he ran another statewide race, this time for governor against Mike Beebe, and lost again.

That’s three losing statewide races – until 2014, when the state’s political dynamic had shifted in the Republican Party’s favor, and he comfortably defeated Democrat Mike Ross in the governor’s race.

Now Hutchinson, 67, is the elder statesman opposed by a young member of the minority party.

Henderson, 39, must know his chances are slim, as Hutchinson did in 1986. Now, every major Arkansas elected official is a Republican. In 2014, Ross managed only 41 percent of the vote against Hutchinson. The last three Democrats in U.S. Senate races, two of them incumbents, have won only 37, 39, and 37 percent of the vote. If Henderson does a few points better than Ross, he’d be beating expectations.

What Henderson is doing is what Republicans like Hutchinson once did. One, he’s running as a member of the minority party because that’s where he believes he belongs. Two, he’s setting himself up for future races when the national political landscape and the state’s demographics might have changed. And three, he’s running for a major position because somebody in the party has to. That’s especially the case with the governor’s race, where parties must field a candidate who earns 3 percent of the vote, or else they must collect signatures to get on the ballot for any race two years later.

The two candidates have one other thing in common. They each have had a big education-related idea.

Hutchinson’s was to make Arkansas the first state to require every high school to teach a computer science class. It was the subject of a very effective 2014 campaign ad featuring his granddaughter, and darn if it didn’t work as a policy, too. The number of students taking computer courses in Arkansas high schools has jumped from a little more than 1,000 before the initiative to 6,184 this past school year. Among the results was possibly Hutchinson’s favorite headline ever, by Wired magazine: “So, Arkansas is leading the learn to code movement.”

Last Thursday, Henderson revealed his own big idea: to make Arkansas teachers the country’s highest paid relative to the state’s cost of living in 10 years. Under Henderson’s plan, teachers would receive a 10 percent raise next year and continue receiving raises every year until the average teacher earned $71,967. He says he’d pay for next year’s raise and the next one’s by not enacting Hutchinson’s planned tax cut for higher-income Arkansans. For later years, the plan lacks details, but he says he’ll provide them.

Hutchinson, meanwhile, had already offered a more modest plan to raise starting teacher salaries to the highest in the region.

Unless something crazy happens, Hutchinson will beat Henderson in November. Henderson may someday win a major elected office, or he may not. Regardless, we’ll have a discussion about teacher pay and about the state’s priorities over the next few months.

And that’s one reason we have campaigns, even when we know who’s probably going to win.