Missing our former governor
Inever was a huge fan of Asa Hutchinson. My cousin was his chief of staff and loves him, and I have friends, both Democrat and Republican, who do. They have their personal Asa stories and political reasons that have brought them to such a conclusion, and I respect them.
And even though I never was crazy about Asa, I miss him more with each passing day under our current governor.
I suspect it is a similar feeling to my lack of excitement about Joe Biden. “Meh” moves in the direction of ardent affection the more possible another Trump presidency appears on the horizon. While I’d much prefer a Jesus-following rocket scientist over Sanders for governor, I would settle for Asa any day, like I would settle for Joe Biden (or Asa Hutchinson or Nikki Haley or a green frog) over Donald Trump as president of this great nation.
There are things I like and don’t like that Asa did as governor. The things I take most personally have to do with education. I did not like it when he appointed a non-educator, Johnny Key, as commissioner of education. Of all the great Arkansas educators out there to choose from, it seemed like a slap in the face as well as a senseless choice. It is worth pointing out here that just as I miss Asa under Sanders, I miss Key under Oliva. This is a sad joke among educators today—how standards lower when you realize you only thought you had it bad before.
I did not like it when Hutchinson and Key hired Harvard lawyer and businessman Baker Kurrus, another non-educator, as superintendent of Little Rock Schools. This seemed another slight to educators everywhere, and particularly Little Rock, where the state had taken over. For educators the whole thing felt like watching a train wreck—something you hate and dread for those aboard but feel helpless to stop and also can’t look away from. I did not know Baker at the time, or I would have felt differently about his appointment, because had I known him, I could have predicted what happened next.
I imagine to the surprise of his bosses, Baker fell in love with the people of Little Rock School District. When he presented compassionate, honest, and ingenious, data-driven solutions to the problems facing the district—that did not fit the political agenda the governor and Key were beholden to—he was fired.
I did not like this. And still don’t. I have read Kurrus’ recommendations and still believe they hold many of the real solutions, not only to the problems in LRSD, but low-performing school districts across the state. Any politician with the will to work on solutions that help those districts should read them.
Our current governor clearly hasn’t. She hasn’t that will any more than her predecessor; in fact, I’d say her will lies in the opposite direction, which is what makes her so much worse. We didn’t need the D.C.-crafted, cookie-cutter monstrosity that is the LEARNS Act, which should be renamed the WFR Act: Welfare for the Rich.
Because regardless of whatever else is thrown in to dress it up, that is the entire point of LEARNS: a universal voucher system. The problem never was a lack of solutions that would work to help students in every ZIP code. The problem under Asa was a lack of political will to do what it would take to help kids in impoverished districts.
The problem under Sanders is darker. She and those in her circle possess the political will to actively leave behind those kids, parents, and communities they don’t see as valuable.
But I digress. I often do.
I admire Asa Hutchinson’s run for president; from my vantage point it looks like possibly his finest hour. And even before this I already had begun to feel some sympathy for the guy as the Republican super-majority in our Legislature turned increasingly against him in his last few years as governor.
That sympathy becomes more like empathy, however, watching him navigate recent Republican Party politics, because it feels in many ways that what he is going through is like what happened to me as I realized I no longer belonged in the Southern Baptist Church.
I have written a lot about that experience. But the parallel, as I see it, to Asa’s recent exit from the Republican presidential primary is that we both loved these institutions as we might love a home that has been good to us, where we have grown up, formed our identity, felt we were a part of important work; and have been able to contribute our gifts, such as they are, to serve others within a framework that fits us, a context we trust, an organization we believe in.
It is ironic that Donald Trump is the lens through which both Asa’s political party and my church affiliation were revealed to be places we cannot call home. They are not interested in our contributions. They do not align with our values. They are not frameworks in which we fit any more.
I may still love Southern Baptists, but like Beth Moore, I cannot be one. And while Asa hasn’t gone so far as to leave the Republican Party, it has left him. If today’s Republican Party is an organization Asa still believes in, it has made clear it does not believe in him any more than it believes in Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, or anyone else who speaks out against Donald Trump.
It is difficult when home is no longer what or where you thought it was. I wish Asa well as he comes to terms with this, and I hope he finds his way to a new place he can be true to his principles and still belong.