Arkansas is one of the most reliably Republican states in the country and hasn’t had a Democratic senator since 2008, which is an eternity in politics.
For many years, incumbent Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton has easily won reelection to his Senate seat, but is now on the verge of being out of work, according to veteran Democratic strategist James Carville.
Appearing on the Politicon podcast, Carville explained why Cotton should be worried.
“I had the Democrat up three. I called her and she said, ‘Oh, no, uh-uh Mr. Carville, our polling has us even.’ Okay. Even, up three, it’s all control. You don’t even know they have a race. If you watched TV and you read the news and you did everything, you would be unaware that there’s a race for the United States Senate. The incumbent is Tom Cotton, who is not a minor figure in the Republican Party, and is in deep trouble for his re-election. Deep trouble.”
That news isn’t a bigger headline, Carville added, and that’s due to bias in the media.
“Your trusted news sources — the one thing you can always trust your trusted news sources to do is to exaggerate Democratic political vulnerability and exaggerate Republican political power.”
Cotton was first elected to the Senate in 2014, and has glided to victory every time he’s run for reelection. But this time could be different, especially with Donald Trump’s popularity at an all-time low and Democrats gaining ground across the country in once safely Republican strongholds such as Kansas.
If indeed Cotton loses to his Democratic challenger, Hallie Shoffner, a farmer who has made the flagging U.S. economy and rising inflation the centerpiece of her campaign, it would be an ominous sign for the GOP.
So far, Cotton has outspent Shoffner by a 65-1 margin, and yet polls show him losing ground against her. And that alone shows weakness, according to Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way.
“There is an all-hands-on-deck panic in the Republican Party and nowhere is it more evident than places like Arkansas where no one thought any Democrat could win a race for dog catcher, let alone United States Senator,” Kessler told Newsweek.
“I’ve been around enough politicians to know that they don’t pile millions of dollars into ads unless they are frightened,” he said. “That’s what is happening to Tom Cotton in Arkansas.”
“In a year in which a political wave happens, there are always a handful of incumbents who are asleep at the wheel and wake up defeated on Wednesday morning,” Kessler said. “This race is still a longshot for Democrats, but Tom Cotton just rang the alarm bell.”
The alarm bells are ringing for Republicans, and those bells may just ring Tom Cotton all the way out of the Senate.
