ASA HUTCHINSON SEEN AS SHOO-IN

FAYETTEVILLE -- U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson's confirmation as Drug Enforcement
Administration director will sail through the Senate, probably before the
next scheduled Senate recess in August, and possibly as early as next week,
U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson said Tuesday. "I've lifted my hold on the
nomination," Hutchinson joked, referring to a Senate rule under which any
senator can delay a confirmation. Tim Hutchinson and Asa Hutchinson are
brothers.

The senator was at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, on Tuesday to
speak to the Fulbright School of Public Affairs, a summer program for high
school seniors from around the state. Tim Hutchinson, R-Bentonville, cited
a June 20 letter of support for Asa Hutchinson's confirmation by 14
Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including chairman
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont. Asa Hutchinson is a Republican from Fort
Smith. Control of the Senate shifted last month to the Democrats when Sen.
James Jeffords of Vermont dropped out of the Republican Party and declared
himself an independent. Asked by students about that change, Hutchinson
said the issue of whether Jeffords should have switched "is between him and
the people of Vermont." The education bill passed by the Senate on June 14
could be "the most significant change in education in 30 years," Hutchinson
also said. In all, the Senate-passed measure could increase federal public
school education spending from $17 billion to $30 billion a year. A House
version of the bill would provide about $24 billion a year for education
assistance. The Senate measure would require states to administer annual
math and reading tests to students in grades three through eight.

Schools with low test scores would receive more aid, but if a school failed
to show enough progress after two years, low-income students would be free
to transfer to another public school. After three years the same students
would be permitted to use federal funds for tutoring or transportation to
another public school. Similar programs in some states indicate "that the
threat of parents taking their children out of a failing school is the
incentive those schools need to improve," Hutchinson said in his speech.
Hutchinson faces a Republican primary opponent in May and Democratic
opposition in November 2002. He told a Republican gathering in Mountain
Home on June 23 that the failure of his marriage to his first wife, Donna
Hutchinson of Bentonville, "has been the greatest failure of my life." In
an interview after his speech Tuesday, Tim Hutchinson was asked what he
would have done differently to avert that failure. "I don't feel like I'm
the person to lecture people on how to preserve a marriage, but I'd say
that not investing the time that's needed in the marriage is a mistake.

I should have worked at it harder, and I'll stop there," he said. A
conservative who built his political career stressing the importance of
family values, Hutchinson married a former member of his Washington staff,
Randi Fredholm, a year and 10 days after the divorce became final.

Randi Hutchinson accompanied him Tuesday.