Difference between revisions of "Tim Hutchinson"

Revision as of 21:08, April 27, 2020

Young Timothy Hutchinson, known as Tim Hutchinson (born August 11, 1949), is a Republican politician-turned-lobbyist who served in the Arkansas House of Representatives, the United States House of Representatives for the 3rd congressional district, and from 1997 to 2003, the United States Senate.​ He was the first Republican to have been elected to the U.S. Senate in Arkansas since 1879.​^[1]

Background

A native of Bentonville in northwestern Arkansas, he is a son of John Malcolm Hutchinson, Sr. (1907–1991) , and the former Coral Virginia Mount (1912–1998). He was reared on the family farm in nearby Gravette. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina and his Master of Arts in 1990 in political science from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.^[1]​

Hutchinson no longer lives in Arkansas. After his defeat for Senate reelection in 2002, he became a resident of Alexandria, Virginia. After his divorce in 1999 from the former Donna King, he married the former Randi Fredholm, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who specializes in real estate and industrial and environmental law.^[2]

Political career

Hutchinson served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1985 to 1992 from a district including a portion of Fort Smith. In 1992, he ran successfully for the Republican nomination in Arkansas' 3rd congressional district to succeed the 26-year incumbent, John Paul Hammerschmidt, who retired after thirteen terms in the House. He defeated fellow Republican state Representative, Richard Barclay of Rogers in Benton County, and then topped the Democrat John VanWinkle, an attorney from Fayetteville, in the same general election in which Bill Clinton, the Arkansas governor at the time, unseated U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush. Hutchinson' margin was only 7,500 votes. Hutchinson's victory was attributed to his margin of ten thousand votes in his native Benton County. This race had the second-closest margin in the 3rd, one of the most Republican districts in the South, which Hammerschmidt had represented since January 1967. The only closer race was in 1974, when Bill Clinton came within 6,300 votes of ousting Hammerschmidt.

The 3rd district reverted to form in 1994, when Hutchinson was reelected with 63 percent of the vote.

Election as U.S. Senator

Hutchinson ran for the Senate seat being vacated by popular Democrat David Pryor, who is also a former Arkansas governor (1975-1978). Initially, the leading Republican candidate for the party nomination was Lieutenant Governor Michael Dale "Mike" Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor. . However, when Democratic Governor James Guy "Jim Guy" Tucker resigned upon his conviction for mail fraud, Huckabee assumed the governorship and dropped out of the Senate race;^[3]

After Huckabee's exodus from the Senate campaign, Hutchinson won the Republican nomination and defeated in the general election the Democratic Attorney General Winston Bryant, 53 to 47 percent even though native son Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole by seventeen points in Arkansas to gain a second termas President.^[4]

After his divorce from Donna Hutchinson, Hutchinson was defeated for reelection to a second term by Mark Pryor, the son of Hutchinson's Senate precedessor. He left elective politics and became a lobbyist, moved to Virginia, and remarried.

Hutchinson is the older brother of Asa Hutchinson, who has served as Arkansas' Republican Governor since 2015.

References