Asa Hutchinson, Former Arkansas Governor, Announces 2024 Presidential Bid
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The former governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, has announced his intentions to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“I have made a decision, and my decision is I’m going to run for president of the United States,” Hutchinson told ABC News.
“While the formal announcement will be later in April, in Bentonville [Arkansas], I want to make it clear to you . . . I am going to be running. And the reason is, I’ve traveled the country for six months, I hear people talk about the leadership of our country. I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”
Hutchinson’s announcement comes on the heels of Donald Trump’s indictment by Manhattan’s district attorney Alvin Bragg which prompted the former governor to come to the former president’s defense.
“It is a dark day for America when a former President is indicted on criminal charges,” Hutchinson wrote in an official statement on Thursday.
However, Hutchinson also managed to throw in a jab insisting that “it is essential that the decision on American’s next President be made at the ballot box and not in the court system. Donald Trump should not be the next President, but that should be decided by the voters.”
See my statement on the indictment of former President Trump below👇🏼: pic.twitter.com/sVOwUxrZwL
— Gov. Asa Hutchinson (@AsaHutchinson) March 30, 2023
Hutchinson joins a growing field of Republican hopefuls including Trump, Nikki Haley — the former governor of South Carolina — and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
During Hutchinson’s time in the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock, he gained notoriety for resuming capital punishment executions and supporting a ban of Syrian refugees from entering Arkansas in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.
Following the 2020 presidential election, Hutchinson became vocally critical of Republicans promoting conspiracy theories that votes were stolen and that former president Donald Trump was unfairly deprived of a second term in office.
“Whenever we do not have the president in power from our party, you have divided leadership — you have many different voices,” the Arkansas governor said. “And former President Trump is dividing our party, and so it’s important that we not unite with someone who is dividing our party.”
Hutchinson added that “relitigating” the 2020 election would be a “recipe for disaster” for Republicans ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Hutchinson was succeeded as Arkansas governor by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, earlier this year.
