PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire — It’s after 10 a.m. on a Thursday in December, and Asa Hutchinson is making his entrance at his first campaign event of the day: a visit to the Golden Egg Diner.
Inside, one enthusiastic supporter is waiting to greet him, as is a man who collects trading cards of politicians and asks Hutchinson to autograph a set bearing his image. The cards are emblazoned with a “Decision 2023” logo.
Hutchinson signs the cards and sends the man on his way, turning to a sparsely filled restaurant. There is no crowd of curious Republican primary voters lining up to meet him. No stage, no microphone, not even a clipboard with a sign-up sheet.
There is the 73-year-old former Arkansas governor, his driver for the day, and a trickle of customers he would need to interrupt with his elevator pitch while their plates of eggs and toast got cold.
In a 2024 presidential primary defined by longshot candidates, Hutchinson may be the most stubborn of all, still plowing forward while barely registering in the polls. His candidacy is testing the limits of just how long a dignified, accomplished conservative — the kind who brought a southern state’s Republican Party into relevance — can withstand rejection from his own party’s base. And it’s all in the hope that somehow, some way, his message will break through.
“Have y’all made up your mind on the race yet?” Hutchinson asks the first table he approaches, two men sipping coffee, after running through an abbreviated version of his resume: Reagan conservative, former governor, former head of the DEA and former congressman who wants to take the Republican Party in a “different direction from Donald Trump.”
One of the men, who identifies as an independent, says he plans to support Nikki Haley. Hutchinson says he likes her, but proceeds to make the case against her. She wants to repeal the federal gas tax and limit trade with China, he says. And besides, he was the only candidate — not Haley — to refuse to raise his hand at the first debate when the candidates were asked if they’d support Donald Trump as the nominee, if convicted.
That was back when Hutchinson could qualify for a debate. He hasn’t since August, and the other man at the table, an independent who is undecided, is fixated on Hutchinson’s polling performance, asking him about it twice in the course of their conversation.
“Still polling low, so I’ve got a long way to go,” Hutchinson tells him.
The man tells Hutchinson to “keep plugging,” and recalls meeting another Arkansan, Bill Clinton, in New Hampshire in 1992. “It went OK for him,” he adds.
After Hutchinson thanks them and walks to another booth, the undecided voter, who declined to give his name, said he didn’t recognize Hutchinson when he approached.
“Honestly,” he said, “I wasn’t even aware he was running.”
A seasoned politician who has held federal and state offices since 1982, Hutchinson is polling at less than 1 percent in national and early-state polls. He boasts the endorsement of a single elected official nationwide, a New Hampshire state senator. His message of moving on from Trumpism gets him booed at conservative activist events.
But unlike higher profile Republicans who dropped out of the presidential primary after failing to gain traction — including former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott —........