Asa Hutchinson
If you want a sign of just how popular raising the minimum wage is, look no further than Arkansas. Rep. Tom Cotton, facing a close race against Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor,
explained Friday that he'd be supporting the state's minimum wage initiative "as a citizen." Similarly, the Republican nominee for Arkansas governor,
announced tepid support for the move to raise Arkansas' minimum wage to $8.50, which recently qualified for November's ballot:
Former U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, the GOP's candidate for governor, also supports the minimum-wage increase, his spokesman J.R. Davis said Friday.
Democrats accused the Republican candidates of favoring the ballot issue for political purposes only. Hutchinson had said he wanted legislators to address the issue, not voters, and Cotton said "empowering individuals and businesses" was a preferred way to grow the economy.
So until the Democrat-backed minimum wage measure was actually on the ballot, these Republicans had various hedges—seriously, Hutchinson's answer was that the minimum wage should be left in the hands of the Arkansas state legislature?—but now that voters will be turning out in part to raise the minimum wage, suddenly Cotton and Hutchinson are supporting it. And Hutchinson has supported raising the minimum wage all along,
he now claims, it's just that "The debate has been, 'What is the process for getting there?" Yeah, sure. Again, it's all very well to claim you want the legislature to do something if you know that's not going to happen.
If the races for Arkansas governor and senator didn't look unexpectedly close, do you think we'd be hearing even this kind of halfhearted support for a minimum wage increase from Tom Cotton and Asa Hutchinson?