Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Republican governors’ opposition to private employer’s vaccine mandates was not “practical” or “principled.”
Anchor Chuck Todd said, “We have evidence here that mandates work. Let me show you statistics in your state. On August 1st, 36% of the state was fully vaccinated. After the vaccine mandate was announced and you had companies like Tyson and Walmart in your state essentially announce their own vaccine mandate, vaccine acceptance went up 30%, got 46% of the state now. Is that not a statement that vaccine mandates had an impact?”
Hutchinson said, “Absolutely, it does indicate that. Our health care workers, many of our hospitals put in a requirement for vaccines, and the rate goes up. So, yes, there is an effectiveness there. Let me make it clear that when I say I don’t believe we ought to be engaging in mandates, I’m speaking of the government mandates, whether it’s a federal government mandate or a state government mandate.”
He continued, “The states are sometimes coming in and saying, ‘Employers should not have the ability to impose a vaccine requirement on their workers.’ To me, that’s the wrong direction as well. It’s not practical in terms of creating that debate, but it’s not principled either. So I am a defender of the employer’s right to provide a healthy workplace. You would have just as many workers say, ‘I don’t want to work there because it’s not a healthy workplace, because not everybody’s going to be vaccinated.’ The employers are in a tough position. They would have the prerogative to make those decisions, and I support that.”
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