Govs. Asa Hutchinson and Mike Beebe

No two individuals are alike. This past week was a reminder of how that’s the case with Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his predecessor, Gov. Mike Beebe.

Hutchinson called legislators to Little Rock to raise $50 million to make the state eligible for $200 million in federal highway funds each of the next five years. His bill did that by relying largely on surplus funds and interest income, which some legislators thought was the wrong way and/or not enough. It was over in three days, and while it was probably inevitable that the governor’s bill would pass, it wasn’t always easy.

This was the second special session this spring. This first was to pass Arkansas Works, the program that uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

Hutchinson has been in office about 16 months and has called three special sessions. In eight years, Beebe called only three special sessions, though two were in his last 15 months in office.

That’s one big difference. Another is this past session included 15 items. That’s not particularly large by historical standards; then-Gov. Bill Clinton once called a special session with 285. However, Beebe’s three sessions combined had only 17 items.

The other big difference is in Hutchinson’s and Beebe’s approach. Beebe, who became governor after a long legislative career, didn’t call lawmakers to Little Rock until the bills were written and the votes counted. Everything was largely done behind closed doors, and then legislators voted and went home.

In contrast, during this past highway session, the actual bill wasn’t filed until legislators were arriving in Little Rock, leading Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, to tell the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “There have been as many Bigfoot sightings in the past 20 years as there have been of the final draft of the governor’s highway bill over the last week.” The bill failed to pass the Senate Transportation Committee, which meant the sponsor, Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, had to move it to another, friendlier one.

Eventually it passed, and Hutchinson signed it into law on the session’s third day, which is as quickly as he’s allowed under the Arkansas Constitution.

Is one governor’s approach better than the other? Let’s just say they’re different. It’s probably true that the highway session was messier under Hutchinson than it would have been under Beebe – in public. Under Beebe, the messiness would have happened earlier, in private.

You could make the case that Beebe’s way is more efficient and that Hutchinson’s is more transparent. Under Beebe, legislators came to Little Rock for very specific purposes and then left, which is good in that it meant they weren’t debating a bunch of bills that were better left for a regular session. With Hutchinson, the process was more open and visible – the debate occurring on the Senate floor and in committee hearings in addition to back rooms.

Meanwhile, the two governors have operated under different circumstances. Beebe led a Legislature that was full of not particularly committed Democrats when he entered office who were replaced by Republicans by the time he left. Hutchinson leads a fractious Republican caucus with a Democratic minority that’s trying to figure out how to assert itself. For a variety of reasons, maybe Beebe had to work things out beforehand, and maybe Hutchinson can’t.

There was some grumbling among legislators about this session’s disorganization. When I asked Hutchinson why, unlike Beebe, he didn’t have all his ducks in a row, he said lawmakers needed the pressure of a session.

“What’s the objective in life?” he asked. “Is it to accomplish significant legislative action, or is to to get things done in a cookie-cutter fashion where the outcome is known before you start? While you like to do all your homework in advance, the fact is, if I would have insisted upon, ‘Everybody sign on to the highway plan before we start,’ we’d never got it done.”

I took that as a defense of his own approach, not a criticism of Beebe’s. They govern in different circumstances, and no two individuals are alike.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson

The question came to mind as Gov. Asa Hutchinson addressed reporters Tuesday: “Governor, when you were a young man fighting to make the Republican Party more than a tiny minority concentrated in the state’s northwest corner, did you ever think it would eventually dominate state politics, and you would lead it, and your most important priority, for a time, would be saving a government health care program?”

The question was not asked. It wasn’t the time or place. Hutchinson makes himself available to reporters and respectfully tries to answer questions. But he’s not a soul-barer.

At issue is Arkansas Works, Hutchinson’s version of the private option. That’s the program created in 2013 after the Supreme Court ruled states under Obamacare could choose whether or not to expand Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty level. Arkansas bucked the trend of other Republican states by accepting the money, but instead of expanding Medicaid, it used it to buy private insurance for that population. As of the end of January, 267,590 Arkansans were eligible.

In the recent special session, Arkansas Works passed 70-30 in the House and 25-10 in the Senate, with support from majorities of Republicans and Democrats in each chamber. But while those votes made it the law of the land, it still must be funded during the Legislature’s current fiscal session. Those majorities fell a little short of the 75 percent needed in each chamber to fund the Department of Human Services’ Medical Services Division, which includes Arkansas Works and other Medicaid programs, including nursing home care.

Opponents, all Republicans, say the private option/Arkansas Works is another health care entitlement for able-bodied adults that neither the state nor an indebted nation can afford. The talk around the Capitol has been whether they will successfully hold up the entire Medical Services Division budget to stop Arkansas Works.

Going into Thursday, the program had enough votes in the House for funding, but none of the 10 Senate opponents had publicly said they were budging. On Thursday, a plan was hatched where legislators would fund Medicaid without Arkansas Works, but Hutchinson would veto just that part of it, and legislators wouldn’t override the veto. But that idea failed, at least temporarily, to advance out of the Joint Budget Committee. So we’re still stuck.

It’s too much to say Hutchinson’s governorship depends on this government health care program, but it is really important to him – important enough that he’s never going to allow 10 senators to stop him. Over the next five years, Arkansas Works is projected to bring $9 billion into the state’s health care economy at the same time the state will lose $5 billion because of other aspects of Obamacare. The state has 19 hospitals that are considered financially vulnerable. Dropping the program would add $1 billion to the amount of uncompensated care they and other providers would provide their uninsured patients.

It also would have a $757 million impact on the state budget, which was one reason why Hutchinson spoke before reporters Tuesday. He wants to call legislators back into special session after this current one to increase funding for highways. The state needs to find about $50 million a year to become eligible for $200 million in federal funding. Hutchinson said that without Medicaid dollars, the state can’t find the matching money for those highway dollars – without raising taxes, which he won’t do.

Like all Republicans, Hutchinson takes pains to declare he opposes Obamacare, even as he depends on Obamacare money. He’s been accused by some of being hypocritical.

He says he’s playing the cards he was dealt. He’d prefer the federal government send those Medicaid dollars to the states as a block grant – still federal government money, by the way – and let the states use that money as they choose without all the strings attached.

Currently, the federal government under President Obama won’t do that. However, you may have noticed we’re in the middle of a presidential election. Maybe the next president will be more open to that idea. That being the case, Arkansas had better stay in the game, Hutchinson says.

That means putting his office on the line, and grappling with members of the party he helped build, so he can save a government health care program that depends on an idea he doesn’t support. Does that make sense? In politics, sometimes yeah.

Related: Arkansas Works and the private option: What’s all the fuss about?