It was not a debate, but it was the first chance for Arkansas voters to hear from all three candidates for governor.
They shared their views on three important topics during a candidate forum tonight in front of hundreds of church and community leaders and interested voters.
The forum was sponsored by Arkansas Out of School Network and several local churches. The main sanctuary at New Hope Baptist Church was full of people eager to hear from the current governor, Republican Asa Hutchinson, and his two challengers: Democrat Jared Henderson, and Libertarian Mark West.
The three candidates took the stage one at a time and answered all the moderators’ questions before leaving the podium and giving the other candidates a chance to answer the same questions.
The questions fell into three categories related to children and the state’s future: summer and after-school programs, health care, and economic development.
On the subject of economic development, Hutchinson pointed to his record of bringing companies such as Sig Sauer to Arkansas and the manufacturing jobs they provide for smaller towns. He also said investments in technology would allow less-resourced parts of the state to catch up with regions that have healthier economies.
“We have over 6,000 students taking computer science,” he mentioned, “and the largest increase is the minorities that are taking computer science. And that gives everybody, across the board, opportunity that they’ve never had before.”
Henderson said greater investment in education would lift the state up. He mentioned a recently-announced plan to make Arkansas’s public-school teachers the highest-paid in the nation.
“I believe, if we’re going to provide equity to our kids, we’ve got to treat it like a profound responsibility,” he said. “We can’t tinker around the edges. We’ve got to put massive investment and act boldly to help kids realize their full potential.”
West, at several points during his allotted time, called for freer markets. He said too much of our tax money is wasted in bureaucracy and added that expensive licensing and regulatory requirements are throttling job creation in rural areas.
“Your big corporations,” he explained, “they can afford to handle this regulation, and all this regulation, and all this extra taxation. But these things kill small businesses, they kill family businesses.”
All three candidates agreed about the value in investing in partnerships to keep kids busy outside the classroom. West said he thought government should spend less on after-school and summer programs, while Henderson and Gov. Hutchinson thought it was a worthwhile investment.
“You know, this is not just so that they stay out of trouble, this is so they grow into the confident, empowered adults we want them to be,” Henderson said.
Hutchinson said the state spends $8 million a year on extra-curricular programs and pointed to his history of partnering with local groups to help children.
“We needed more foster parents, and churches and faith-based organizations helped us to recruit more foster parents,” he said. “So, this is the kind of partnership that I believe is important.”
West said he wanted communities to take more ownership of programs that help their children. “I would like to—if elected governor—begin encouraging business owners in these communities to start doing apprenticeships for kids,” he said, “you know, once they get into their teenage years, so that can start preparing them for the workforce, so they’ve got a marketable skill that they can take and get a job when they’re ready to work.”
To improve access to quality health care, West argued that lower taxes would allow small-town clinics to serve more patients.
“Why are we taking so many taxes out of communities, and we’re giving bread crumbs back to communities,” he asked, “when we need to be eliminating those taxes and allowing communities to have that power? Because your money is your power.”
Hutchinson and Henderson agreed that the legislature should stop changing the eligibility requirements for Arkansas Works, the state’s Medicaid expansion program, which has provided health care coverage to approximately 300,000 people.
“We need to stop haggling over this process,” Henderson stated. “We need to celebrate it! We need to stop re-debating it every year, and we need to move on to the more important and fundamental challenge in health care, which has already been raised, which is: how do we get the costs under control?”
“And, yes, I think we’ve reached a point that we’re beyond that,” Hutchinson added. “I think it’s going to be easier in the future because we’ve reformed it, we’ve strengthened it. We’ve proven its worth, as well.”
A spokesperson for Henderson’s campaign said the candidates are likely to have one televised debate before the election. Early voting begins October 22, and Election Day is November 6.
Only one public poll has been released about the governor’s race, but it was conducted in March, two months before the primary, and did not include West.
