Asa Hutchinson Announces Presidential Bid

Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, joined the race for the Republican nomination for president on Sunday, banking that in a crowded field, enough G.O.P. voters will be searching for an outspoken critic of Donald J. Trump to lift his dark-horse candidacy.

“I’ve traveled the country for six months,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I hear people talk about the leadership of our country. I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America and not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”

Mr. Hutchinson has made several trips to Iowa, where he has tested out what he has called a message of “consistent conservatism” to Republican voters who have flocked to Mr. Trump in the past two elections. Recent polling has shown Mr. Trump’s lead among primary voters surging as his legal peril has grown. The former president is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan on charges that he falsified business records and violated New York campaign finance law to cover up hush-money payments to a pornographic film actress in the final days of the 2016 election.

With several other cases pending, Mr. Hutchinson appears to be betting that external forces will trip up Mr. Trump’s third run for the White House. Other anti-Trump Republicans, such as the former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, have declined to run. And the Republicans who have jumped in or are preparing to — Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor — have carefully avoided direct criticism of the front-runner.

“This is one of the most unpredictable political environments that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Mr. Hutchinson said on ABC. “So my message of experience, of consistent conservatism and hope for our future in solving problems that face Americans, I think that that resonates.”

Mr. Hutchinson is not a moderate Republican. He signed a ban on abortion that makes no exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest, though he expressed some reservations. He has pressed for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. And he led a task force convened by the National Rifle Association after the massacre of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 to come up with a response to blunt the push for gun control.

But his government experience is broader than other candidates in the race. In addition to his two terms as governor, he served in the House, led the Drug Enforcement Administration and headed the Border and Transportation Security Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security when it was created after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But his outspoken criticism of the former president has set him apart in a Trump-dominated party where dissent has not been tolerated. He has said Mr. Trump and those who supported his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election should not have positions of power. He stood against the Republican National Committee’s censure of former Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for serving as the only two Republicans on the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He also called Mr. Trump’s election denial a “recipe for disaster” for the party.

Mr. Hutchinson was one of the very few Republicans to issue a statement after Mr. Trump’s indictment last week that did not dismiss the charges as political.

“It is a dark day for America when a former President is indicted on criminal charges,” he wrote on Thursday. “While the grand jury found credible facts to support the charges, it is important that the presumption of innocence follows Mr. Trump. We need to wait on the facts and for our American system of justice to work like it does for thousands of Americans every day.”