Republican Asa Hutchinson, who spent years in the national political spotlight in Washington, D.C. as a congressman and Bush administration official, has returned home to mount a campaign for Arkansas' top job.
 As a former undersecretary of Homeland Security, Hutchinson is campaigning on what he knows, outlining a four-pronged approach to curb illegal immigration -- a goal, he says, that should not be left up to the federal government.
His plan for the state includes requiring state and local jail authorities to verify the legal status of prisoners before releasing them and mandating more training for local law officers to check the immigration status of people in custody, reported the Arkansas News Bureau.
Hutchinson also would require state and private contractors doing work for the state to conform to federal standards of verifying workers' legal status.
In addition, he would add a full-time investigator to the Arkansas State Police Department to investigate fraud cases in an effort to discourage people from trying to falsify or forge legal documents.
Trained as a lawyer, Hutchinson first entered public service in 1982 when President Reagan appointed him U.S. attorney for western Arkansas, and as such successfully prosecuted a religious extremist group known as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord.
Hutchinson next ran, unsuccessfully, for then-incumbent Democratic Sen. Dale Bumpers' seat and again, also unsuccessfully, as attorney general. He instead served for five years as chairman of the state's Republican Party.
Hutchinson was elected to the U.S. House in 1996 and re-elected two more times in 1998 and 2000. In Congress, he was involved in efforts to crack down on illegal drugs, particularly methamphetamines, and reform campaign finance laws.
He also had a role in the historic impeachment trial of President Clinton, serving as one of the managers charged with prosecuting the president in the U.S. Senate.
"This is certainly a humbling experience for a small town lawyer. I learned to love and respect the law trying cases in the courtrooms of rural Arkansas and the scene is different in this historic chamber with the chief justice presiding, but what is at stake remains the same," Hutchinson said at the time. "In every case heard in every courtroom in this great country: it is truth, justice and the law that are at stake. In this journey on earth there is nothing of greater consequence for us to devote our energies to than to search for the truth, to pursue equal justice and to uphold the law."
He was appointed administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2001, and then after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, was confirmed by the Senate as under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
In January 2005, he stepped down from his post at DHS to return to Arkansas and announce his intentions to run for governor.
Web site: www.asaforgovernor.org
-- Compiled by Larisa Epatko for the Online NewsHour
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