Governor uses 'gimmicks', not leadership to win

Maylon T. Rice
Maylon T. Rice

My once powerful and positive grading of Gov. Asa Hutchinson's basic understanding of Arkansas legislative members and how the two chambers work may have been miscalculated.

No, it seems, it was downright incorrect.

Over the last two months, more than ever, as the fiscal session of the Arkansas Legislature loomed, Gov. Hutchinson seems stymied -- the best term I can use in a family newspaper -- on how to deal with a minority of 10 state senators and 20 or so state representatives.

Once I had thought and written that Hutchinson, a former head of the Arkansas Republican Party and five-time statewide candidate, would ride the Red Wave of the Republican Party into absolute power in the state like a victorious general, his back straight as a board and aboard a gallant, gleaming stallion.

Instead, over the past week, he looks like a straw-hat-wearing immigrant, dressed in a basic bleached smock astride a tiny flop-eared burrow with Hutchinson's bare feet just inches from the ground.

And the major questions arise, which have always haunted Asa Hutchinson: Is he trustworthy? Can he be a leader?

One prominent state senator wrote to a colleague this weekend.

"Tomorrow will also make the day the Democratic Caucuses will meet to discuss strategy, and the willingness of our Members to take 'extra-ordinary' steps and votes to make sure that Medicaid Expansion is funded in Arkansas for the next Fiscal Year!," the senator wrote.

Those extra-ordinary steps are approving an amendment that would indeed kill the Medicaid Expansion program.

And then believing the governor will veto that amendment to save the program.

These chilling words followed in the senator's explanation on just how tenuous this deal was.

"There will be some tension for us in all of this, for we are being asked to trust folks who have not always proven to be so trustworthy."

Yup.

Arkansans are asked to "trust folks who have not always proven to be so trustworthy."

The key phrase for me is "not always PROVEN to be so trustworthy." My emphasis is on the word proven.

Again and again in this on-going controversy begs the question: Can Asa become a leader?

Gov. Hutchinson is the governor of Arkansas. He has all the political power that the office contains. It is true that while he cannot cast a vote in either the House or the Senate, but, again, he is the governor.

He has acted gubernatorial at times.

But this is, apparently, not one of those times.

He is going to accomplish his goal of continuing the Arkansas Works program by a legal gimmick. And only after sharp-eyed Democrats helped the governor and his legal staff fluff up the wording of the proposed amendment, as submitted by Hutchinson's office for the bill, into a truly legally defensible wording.

Even when Hutchinson had the opportunity, he didn't have the real moxie and legal maneuvering without reaching out to others for assistance.

The far right of the GOP is still holding press conferences seeking to inflame their minority base which hates all things related to Obamacare, health care and federal programs, despite the obvious $178 million hole rejecting these funds will place on Arkansas' mandated balanced budget.

Hutchinson sits quietly in his corner office on the second floor of the state capitol. He and his staff are apparently not engaging in old-fashioned gubernatorial ploys such as arm-twisting, calling folks on the carpet, or butt-chewings to prod along a complex program which is best for more than 270,000 low income, poor and needy.

Instead Hutchinson and his staff are said to be deploying legal gimmicks, verbal trickery, written confusion and deceitful now-you-see-it, now-you-don't in legislative bills.

That's not leadership.

And not the leadership Arkansans have come to expect from the occupant of the governor's office at the state capitol.

-- Maylon Rice is a former journalist who worked for several northwest Arkansas publications. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Editorial on 04/27/2016