“I wondered, what the hell would I say to my grandchildren when they asked me what happened and what I did about it?” Hendren said in the video he posted on YouTube on Thursday.
His action highlights the dangers of the Republican Party’s continued loyalty to Trump: although he is supported by the vast majority of the party base, he also alienated some conservatives and sparked fierce opposition that broke fundraising and voter turnout records in the middle 2018 and Election 2020.
“There is a real danger that the Republican Party is one where you cannot win a primary without being a Trump supporter, and you cannot win a general by being a Trump supporter,” Hendren said in an interview on Friday . “What would have happened, then, is that we took a party that was about principles and about conservative government for one that is about a man and a personality. And this is a race that does not end well for the Republican Party.”
Hendren, 57, is an Arkansas native and a former Air Force fighter pilot. He has been a state legislator since 1995 – first in the Chamber and since 2013 in the Senate, where he served for four years as the majority leader. His father was also an Arkansas state legislator, and his uncle, Hutchinson, is in his second term as governor.
In the video, Hendren – who said he is now independent – said his departure from the Republican Party took years to happen.
He highlighted Trump’s characterization during the 2016 campaign of Mexican immigrants as rapists, his ridicule of a Gold Star family, his mockery of the late Arizona senator John McCain and his “encouragement of the worst voices of racism, nationalism and violence”.
“I saw the ex-president actively fan the flame of racist rhetoric, mock people with disabilities, intimidate his enemies and talk about women in ways that would never be tolerated in my home or business,” he said, blaming Republican leaders for failing to intervene.
Democrats said Hendren’s decision underscored the Republican Party’s tendency towards radicalism.
“He said what most of us already knew, that the Arkansas Republican Party today is not focusing on the needs of the Arkansans, but on the rhetoric and the issues that divide our country,” said Arkansas Democratic Party President Michael John Gray, in a statement.
Hendren had previously faced reaction from conservatives in Arkansas because of his sponsorship of hate crime legislation. He would have had a remote chance in a primary election for Republican governor, in which former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of former governor Mike Huckabee, is a big favorite.
Lt. Governor Tim Griffin dropped out of the governor race earlier this month, saying he would run for attorney general instead. Current attorney general Leslie Rutledge is also running for governor.
Hendren said on Friday that he has not yet decided whether to run for governor as an independent. He said he was launching a new organization called Common Ground Arkansas, which he said was “about me building a place for people who are politically homeless”.
“I didn’t rule that out,” Hendren told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on “Erin Burnett OutFront” Friday night about a run for governor. “But this is about something much bigger and broader than a race for governor in Arkansas – if I wanted to be governor, I probably wouldn’t be leaving the dominant party in Arkansas. It is about building a house for people who don’t. I don’t have one now. “
When asked whether the Republican Party should split and a new center-right party should emerge, Hendren replied, “This will be a decision that the party will have to make for itself.”
This story was updated with Hendren’s comments on CNN on Friday night.