William Asa Hutchinson II, born December 3, 1950, in Bentonville, Arkansas, the youngest of six children to grocer, farmer, and former mayor John Malcom Hutchinson Sr. and Coral Hutchinson, was raised on a small farm near Gravette. He graduated from Springdale High School in 1968, met his future wife Susan Burrell at Bob Jones University, and married her in 1973; they have four children and seven grandchildren. His older brother Tim Hutchinson also served in Congress. Hutchinson began his legal career as city attorney for Bentonville (1977-1978) and was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas (1982-1985), the youngest in the nation at the time. He chaired the Arkansas Republican Party (1990-1995), ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 1986 and state attorney general in 1990, and served three terms as U.S. Representative for Arkansas's 3rd District (1997-2001), including as a House manager in President Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment trial. Under President George W. Bush, he served as Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (2001-2003) and the first Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security (2003-2005). After an unsuccessful 2006 gubernatorial bid, he was elected Arkansas's 46th governor in 2014, taking office January 13, 2015, and winning re-election in 2018 with 65% of the vote—the most votes for any Republican gubernatorial candidate in state history. His administration delivered over $700 million in annual tax cuts, exempted veterans' retirement pay from state income tax, shrank state government, created over 100,000 jobs, secured incentives for nearly 450 companies, and led nationally in computer science education; he chaired the National Governors Association (2021-2022) with an initiative on computer science literacy. A 2024 Republican presidential candidate, he is now CEO of Hutchinson Group LLC, a security and corporate affairs consulting firm in Rogers, Arkansas, and Of Counsel at the Asa Hutchinson Law Group PLC, with offices in Arkansas, Washington, D.C., Madrid, Paris, and Geneva.