In Arkansas’ US Senate race, rivals paint Cotton as not focused on the state

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has not debated his two opponents

Twelve years after he was elected in one of the most expensive Senate races in the country, Sen. Tom Cotton has become one of the most prominent Republicans in Washington and a leading defender of President Donald Trump.

His rivals, Democrat Hallie Shoffner and Libertarian Jeff Wadlin, say Arkansas has fallen by the wayside as Cotton’s raised his profile.

Shoffner and Wadlin are criticizing Cotton as absent from the state, and point to his refusal to participate in debates with them as emblematic of that absence.

“My personal opinion is that he’s a coward… and he should make himself available to his constituents,” Wadlin said.

Republicans have held every statewide and federal office in Arkansas for over a decade. But Trump’s low approval rating and rising concerns about affordability have put Republican states in play and have Arkansas Democrats believing the race is competitive. Shoffner’s campaign has caught national attention, though not the national spending seen in other states.

Cotton and Shoffner had agreed to a debate hosted by Salem Media Group, a conservative Christian outlet. Salem Media did not invite Wadlin to the debate, he said, and the outlet retracted the offer to Cotton and Shoffner this month.

A Cotton spokesperson said the senator had been hoping to make Shoffner answer for her comments on illegal immigration. In September, Cotton’s team began running TV ads quoting Shoffner saying in a podcast interview that Arkansas farmers would “trade five Americans for just one” undocumented immigrant worker.

Shoffner’s family farmed soybeans in Jackson County for 150 years until she closed the farm due to financial strain last year. She told the Advocate she was relaying another farmer’s words rather than speaking for herself or her family.

“Tom Cotton is going to clip up everything that I say, and he’s going to mischaracterize it,” Shoffner said. “And he’s doing it because he’s scared, because he hasn’t had a town hall in nine and a half years, because he hasn’t shown up for the people of Arkansas.”

The idea that Cotton doesn’t truly represent the state has been a consistent refrain of his opponents throughout the election cycle, including the primaries. Shoffner and Wadlin said they have met people frustrated with the high costs of necessities.

The Arkansans Shoffner has met while campaigning don’t talk to her about how Cotton’s ads portray her, she said.

“With gas being over $4 a gallon in a state in which we drive 30 minutes to an hour to get anywhere, with grocery prices the way they are… These are the things I hear about on the campaign trail,” Shoffner said.

Wadlin said he has traveled to all 75 counties and found “an interesting mix” of Arkansans enthused by his campaign, including “center-right conservatives who are frustrated with Tom Cotton.”

“I get this heterogenous mix of people who are independents, Libertarians and disengaged voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote at all,” Wadlin said.

Cotton’s team did not respond to a list of emailed questions from the Arkansas Advocate.

On his campaign website, Cotton touts himself as someone who “uses his influence in the U.S. Senate to deliver for Arkansas,” citing his support for tax cuts and the growth of the state’s defense industry since he took office.

“[These] are the popular things that Arkansans want their senator to be doing: putting money back in their pocket through tax cuts, supporting our military, supporting our law enforcement, securing our border, keeping them safe and helping their families prosper,” Cotton told 40/29 News in a September interview.

Tom Cotton is going to clip up everything that I say, and he’s going to mischaracterize it, and he's doing it because he's scared.

– Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner

Cotton, Republicans outspending rivals in race

Democrats have not won a statewide or U.S. House race in Arkansas since 2010.

Cotton unseated Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor in 2014 and easily won reelection in 2020 against only a Libertarian opponent after the Democrat challenging Cotton dropped out after the filing period. He is the Senate’s third-ranking Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Democrats see rare signs of hope in solidly red Arkansas’ midterms

Most national political forecasters have rated Arkansas’ Senate race as solidly Republican, though the Almanac of American Politics moved it from safe to “likely” Republican.

A Hendrix College and Talk Business & Politics poll indicated a tight race between Shoffner and Cotton in August, raising Democrats’ hopes for an upset, but the gap widened to show Cotton leading by 9 percentage points this month. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Cotton and groups backing him have routinely outraised and outspent his opponents. America One, a conservative super PAC, has spent more than $4.4 million this year on the race, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Cotton and the Republican Party of Arkansas announced a $1 million effort to get out the vote Oct. 15, days before early voting began.

I get this heterogenous mix of people who are independents, Libertarians and disengaged voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote at all.

– Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Wadlin

Healthcare access and costs

Cotton supported the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sweeping 2025 federal tax and spending legislation Trump signed that will cut Medicaid spending starting Jan. 1. Medicaid serves more than 800,000 low-income and disabled Arkansans.

Shoffner said “the most heartbreaking” conversations she has with Arkansans have been about the future of Medicare and Medicaid. Arkansas was the first Southern state to expand Medicaid, but the Trump administration denied a five-year extension of the program in July. The state is now seeking a temporary two-year extension.

Uninsured and underinsured people delay seeking healthcare because they cannot afford it, only to pay more when they have a medical emergency, and sitting members of Congress have not done enough to fix this, Shoffner said.

“It is time for them to go and be replaced by someone who understands what life is like on the ground, and I do,” she said.

Wadlin said the healthcare system “needs to be totally overhauled” and suggested a “hub-and-spoke system” requiring certain types of care to be available within specific distances of where people live. He acknowledged that the idea is “not the most Libertarian solution” and would take a great deal of effort, but he considers himself a “pragmatic centrist.”

“I want to actually solve problems, and sometimes that does take a public-private partnership,” he said.

(These) are the popular things that Arkansans want their senator to be doing: putting money back in their pocket through tax cuts, supporting our military, supporting our law enforcement, securing our border, keeping them safe and helping their families prosper.

– Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton

Agriculture, tariffs and the Iran war

Shoffner has regularly criticized Cotton’s past votes against the Farm Bill, the federal agriculture spending and policy package that Congress regularly renews.

Cotton has said past versions of the bill allocated too much money to food aid programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which will face spending cuts and higher administrative costs as of Jan. 1.

Senate Democrats have opposed the current Farm Bill recently endorsed by the Senate Agriculture Committee because of SNAP cuts. Shoffner has said she would have voted to advance the bill to get farmers the financial support they need.

The current Farm Bill expired Sept. 30, and Congress recessed without renewing it. Last year, Cotton asked U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to speed up aid to farmers.

Cotton has distanced himself from one of Trump’s stances on agriculture, opposing the president’s plan to allow more foreign beef in the U.S.

Cotton has broadly supported the Trump administration’s tariffs. He told KATV last week that the U.S. should tariff imported rice “being unlawfully subsidized by other countries,” blaming these subsidies for east Arkansas rice farmers’ financial struggles.

Shoffner’s opposition to Trump’s tariffs, which forced her to close her family’s farm, is a key pillar of her campaign. Wadlin said he would support targeted tariffs on products subsidized by other countries, but he opposes Trump’s “blanket tariffs.”

Additionally, Cotton has been a vocal supporter of the war in Iran that Trump started in February, while Shoffner and Wadlin oppose it. Wadlin said the money that went into the United States’ wars in the Middle East during the past two decades could have funded Social Security, which is expected to have insufficient funds to provide full benefits to beneficiaries in 2032.

“We should be spending money on things that are actually killing people [here] — diabetes, cancer, dementia, heart disease — not nuclear weapons from Iran,” Wadlin said.

Disrupted commerce in the Middle East during the war has caused gasoline and fertilizer prices to spike, and Shoffner said this fuels much of the frustration drawing Arkansans to her campaign.

“A lot of folks who come to my events walk up to me and they’re feeling a lot of anxiety, a lot of sadness, and they’re ready for something different,” she said. “I hope that my campaign provides them with a vision for the future in which they feel that they can not just survive but thrive.”