A white paper on Republican Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson's website appears to copy nearly-verbatim from a blog post, a quote from South Dakota Sen. John Thune, and a USA Today article.

Hutchinson's white paper on job creation through technology copies a blog post by former IGN Entertainment president and current head of Bloomberg Beta Roy Bahat. The paper likewise copies a USA Today column by Hadi Partovi that, while footnoted, fails to attribute the words themselves to Partovi.

Bahat told BuzzFeed News he'd never spoken with the campaign.

"I have had zero interaction with the campaign. I'm just happy that technology learning is now a mainstream issue," he said.

The Hutchinson campaign said the white paper cam from "a campaign volunteer (unpaid and not staff)" and they would be adding attribution to the article.

The Hutchinson campaign provided emails showing this to be the case.

Here's the statement they gave BuzzFeed News:

The computer coding paper gives credit to four sources: Code.org; USA Today; McKinsey and Arkansas Business. These four sources are noted in the footnotes to the paper and were essential in providing background and specific information on the topic. The push for computer coding is not an original issue with Mr. Hutchinson but it is a national effort and the credit is properly given to Code.org and other national leaders on this important initiative.



The Hutchinson staff did not review any other blogs or know of Mr. Bahat's writing on this subject. A campaign volunteer (unpaid and not staff) who has a background in communication and research did provide a written paper on this topic and it was represented to be his original writing. Portions of the volunteer's research were included in the final white paper. After the campaign has reviewed and compared the document - we will be IMMEDIATELY adding attribution to our policy paper on our website.



The campaign stands by the initiative and believes computer coding is the right direction for Arkansas.