Hutchinson and Bill Clinton first encountered each other in law school in the 1970s. Clinton adversary's change of heart

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — As a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, Asa Hutchinson sent Bill Clinton’s brother to jail. As a member of Congress in the late 1990s, Hutchinson steered impeachment proceedings against the president from his home state.

But to hear him tell it now, Hutchinson — likely the next governor of this state — has the utmost respect for Hillary Clinton, and he’s downright fond of Bill.


That posture is a testament to the enduring power of the Clinton name here. But it’s also driven by the complicated relationship Hutchinson has had with Clinton dating back to the 1970s, long before they faced off over Monicagate or became household names in Arkansas politics.

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Now the favorite to defeat Democratic candidate Mike Ross in the governor’s race, Hutchinson has the potential to be a serious thorn in both Clintons’ sides if Hillary Clinton runs for president as expected. But in a 40-minute interview here, the 63-year-old Hutchinson showed little interest in becoming a surrogate for Clinton antagonists.

If their opposing political parties make them adversaries by default, Hutchinson made clear he harbors no grudge against the Clintons — even if the former first couple’s allies hold one against him.

“I ran in 1996 for Congress, and [Bill Clinton] came in and campaigned, of course, for my Democratic opponent,” Hutchinson recalled with a smile. “He’s always been on the other side from a political standpoint,” adding that Clinton’s fervor for politics, even as he nears age 70, is “something that’s perhaps even refreshing to see.”

To say Clinton has “always been on the other side” may be an understatement. In Congress, Hutchinson, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, chose to serve as one of the House managers handling Clinton’s impeachment — something many Democrats here have never gotten over.

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About 10 years after the impeachment, Hutchinson told The Associated Press that he initially wasn’t interested in joining the proceedings, though many of his colleagues on Judiciary were spearheading the effort. And though reports from the time indicate that Hutchinson wasn’t as excited about the impeachment drive as some of his fellow Republicans, he opted to play a central role in it just the same.

“I’m grateful for this opportunity, although it … comes with deep regret to be before you,” Hutchinson told senators in the opening remarks of his impeachment presentation in 1999. But then he proceeded to dive in, outlining the “seven pillars of obstruction” Clinton allegedly perpetrated.

“I knew it wasn’t good politics for Arkansas, being the president’s home state,” he said a decade later, reflecting on the impeachment experience in the AP interview. But he concluded that “I could actually help our country go through a difficult time, and so I accepted that responsibility reluctantly.”

“Anybody who observed me at that time knows I was just trying to help the country through a difficult time,” Hutchinson added during the interview with POLITICO last week.

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To which many Arkansas Democrats respond: Please. They were outraged then and say they haven’t forgotten that Hutchinson chose to help prosecute the president who put their state on the map.

“There’s no love lost, that’s for sure,” said Little Rock’s Democratic Mayor Mark Stodola, a longtime Clinton supporter. “There’s a substantial number of people who believe Asa did not have to go do that extra step by being part of the impeachment team, that the piling on was gratuitous coming from Arkansas.”

A spokesman for Bill Clinton did not return a request for comment on the former president’s relationship with Hutchinson.

Hutchinson was courteous, if somewhat reserved, during the interview last week, joining a reporter in a dark-paneled conference room in a building that houses his campaign headquarters after walking his grown daughter — whose child stars in one of Hutchinson’s best-received ads — to the door. The former congressman, who is 6 feet 1 inch, sat tall, with his thinning, nearly white hair neatly combed back, and invited the interviewer to “ask me anything you’d like.” There was no fire-breathing rhetoric: Hutchinson, trained as a lawyer, talked about Arkansas and his opponent in a cool, analytical tone. And when he didn’t want to discuss a subject — like Hillary Clinton — he declined to answer questions witha broad smile.

Hutchinson’s brother, Tim Hutchinson, lost his Senate seat in 2002 to Arkansas Attorney General Mark Pryor, as Democrats called Tim Hutchinson a hypocrite for vocally backing impeachment even as he divorced the mother of his children to marry a much younger staffer. Now Pryor is locked in one of the closest Senate races of the year against GOP Rep. Tom Cotton.

Asa Hutchinson, who represented a conservative district in an otherwise Democratic-tilted state, escaped the impeachment politically unscathed (though there were rumblings of anger from some constituents at the time).

Skip Rutherford, the dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas and a longtime friend of the former president, said he doesn’t think people “wake up in the middle of the night and pace the floor over it. But do they recall it? Yeah. I recall it.”

Ross, Hutchinson’s opponent, has brought up impeachment on occasion, though in an interview with POLITICO, Ross said his campaign is “not about reliving the past.” Clinton campaigned for the Democratic ticket in Arkansas last week and will do so again over the weekend.

Hutchinson and Bill Clinton first encountered each other at the University of Arkansas Law School in the 1970s, when Hutchinson was a student and Clinton, fresh out of Yale Law School, was teaching (though he was not Hutchinson’s professor). Hutchinson’s politics hadn’t yet jelled: He recalled going door-to-door for David Pryor, the former Democratic senator and governor of Arkansas, who is the father of Mark Pryor.

As it turned out, that was the last time Hutchinson campaigned for a Democrat, he said, but his interactions with Clinton continued.

“Our paths crossed [again] when I was U.S. attorney and he was governor at that time,” Hutchinson said of Bill Clinton in the interview. I remember him calling my home [about] this terrorist group up in northern Arkansas. We worked together [on a stand-down].”

In the 1980s, Hutchinson, then a Reagan-appointed U.S. attorney, “had the unfortunate responsibility” of prosecuting Clinton’s half-brother, Roger, who eventually went to jail on drug charges. But in the former president’s memoirs, published after he left office, Clinton wrote that the jail time probably saved Roger Clinton’s life — and he had praise for Hutchinson’s conduct.

“Asa Hutchinson was professional, fair and sensitive to the agony my family was experiencing,” Clinton wrote. “I wasn’t at all surprised when later he was elected to Congress from the Third District.”

Hutchinson was for a long time one of a handful of Republican voices in a Southern state with a strong Democratic tradition. As Clinton climbed the ranks, Hutchinson lost three statewide races.

“Whether it’s Dale Bumpers” — the beloved former senator, to whom Hutchinson lost in 1986, and who delivered the final speech on behalf of Clinton in the impeachment proceedings — “or Bill Clinton, they’ve had a very strong farm team, and populist-type candidates on the Democratic side,” Hutchinson said.

In the early 1990s, Hutchinson served as state GOP chairman while Clinton was governor.

“So we’ve always been very respectful adversaries, respectful political adversaries,” he said. “That’s how I viewed that relationship.”

In 1996, Hutchinson won his first House race. His opponent was Ann Henry, a personal friend of the Clintons who hosted the couple’s wedding reception at her home; her top campaign strategist was also Clinton’s former chief of staff, according to a report from the time.

From the House, Hutchinson was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. His nomination sailed through the Senate on a 98-1 vote, with Hillary Clinton, then a senator, voting yes.

She “did me the great honor of supporting my confirmation,” Hutchinson said. And after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the two had “very professional” interactions when he served as undersecretary in the Department of Homeland Security and she was in the Senate.

Hutchinson declined repeatedly to assess a potential Hillary Clinton 2016 candidacy or to say whether he’d be a surrogate for the eventual GOP nominee. He skirted questions about his party’s criticism of her on issues like the Benghazi attacks. “This race is about Arkansas, not about what happens three years from now, it’s about what happens next year,” Hutchinson said.

“I think they’ve looked at me as somebody who’s very committed to our country,” he later said of the Clintons. “We have different viewpoints, I respect them the same ways. And so I would just urge anybody who’s worried about the past to take the same fair approach and look at my heart.”