Tom Cotton (Republican Party) is a member of the U.S. Senate from Arkansas. He assumed office on January 3, 2015. His current term ends on January 3, 2027.
Cotton (Republican Party) is running for re-election to the U.S. Senate to represent Arkansas. He declared candidacy for the 2026 election.
Cotton won election to the seat formerly held by Democrat Mark Pryor in 2014. The 2014 race between Cotton and Pryor was rated a toss-up by both Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball. Additionally, FiscalTimes listed it as one of the seven most vulnerable seats in the country, and The Washington Post included it on their list of the top 10 races to watch in 2014.
In 2015, Cotton wrote a letter to political leaders in Iran, signed by a majority of Republican senators, stating that any nuclear agreement between President Barack Obama (D) and Iran, if not ratified by Congress, would be considered an executive agreement subject to change by future presidents or congressional votes.
Cotton is a former member of the U.S. House. He represented Arkansas' 4th Congressional District from 2013 to 2015. Upon taking office, Politico named him the freshman "most likely to succeed." Cotton was endorsed by groups affiliated with the tea party movement, including the Tea Party Express.
Cotton served as an officer in the U.S. Army from 2005 to 2009. During his service, he earned a Bronze Star.
As of a 2014 analysis of multiple outside rankings, Cotton is an average Republican member of Congress, meaning he will vote with the Republican Party on the majority of bills.
Cotton was included on President Donald Trump’s (R) list of 20 potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees released on September 9, 2020. President Trump (R) nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the seat on September 26, 2020. For more information on the 2020 Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, 2020, click here.
Cotton was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle, Ark. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College where he served as a columnist for the Harvard Crimson. He graduated magna cum laude.
On January 11, 2005, Cotton joined the United States Army and entered Officer Candidate School in March 2005. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army on June 30, 2005. Cotton later attended both the U.S. Army Airborne School and Ranger School. In June 2006, Cotton gained public attention after he wrote an open letter to The New York Times criticizing the paper's publication of an article detailing a Bush administration secret program monitoring terrorists' finances. In 2008, he volunteered to return to combat duty, was promoted to captain on August 1, 2008, and deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom on October 15, 2008. In Afghanistan, Cotton was assigned to Laghman Province, just north of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. He was assigned duty as the operations officer of a Provincial Reconstruction Team, where he planned and resourced daily counter-insurgency and reconstruction operations for an 83-member joint and interagency team.
Cotton returned from Afghanistan on July 20, 2009. For his second tour in Afghanistan, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and various campaign/service medals. He was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army on September 26, 2009, at Fort Myer, Virginia.
He served as a clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith and then engaged in private practice as an attorney with the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and Cooper & Kirk. After leaving active duty, Cotton joined McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm. He subsequently returned to Dardanelle, where he began working on his family's cattle farm.
