Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has handily won reelection for his second term on Nov. 3, beating Libertarian Ricky Harrington. Democrats didn’t put up a challenger.
With nearly 83 percent of precincts reporting, Cotton’s win was apparent as he garnered about 67 percent of the vote compared to Harrington’s 33 percent.
Cotton, a Harvard graduate and former Army captain, flipped his seat red in 2014, defeating two-term Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor. Before that, he represented Arkansas’s 4th Congressional District for one term.
He said it was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that convinced him to become a soldier instead of a lawyer.
“I was in law school finishing up my last year, I was going to go on to be a lawyer, but from that day forward, I resolved that I wanted to serve in our military and go overseas to defend America and defend our freedom,”
he told Breitbart in September.
Cotton’s agenda is strongly
pro-law enforcement and
pro-life. He’s been known as a China hawk, pushing against the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the United States and around the world.
He recently
introduced legislation that would force lobbyists for Chinese companies controlled by the Chinese regime to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
He was among the signatories of an
Oct. 26 letter demanding that the College Board explain its ties to a CCP group involved in a propaganda campaign aimed at the United States’ primary education system through the Confucius Institutes.
He also put forward a proposal to
set up an intelligence office within the U.S. Department of Agriculture to keep U.S. agricultural innovations from falling into the hands of foreign countries, especially China.
Cotton has been an early supporter of President Donald Trump.
Since 2018, three people have been arrested for threatening Cotton. Two of them also threatened other GOP politicians.
Update: The article has been updated with Arkansas election results as of 11:46 p.m., Nov. 3.
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