Tom Cotton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Tom Cotton
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Official portrait, 2015
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| United States Senator from Arkansas |
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| Assumed office January 3, 2015 Serving with John Boozman
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| Preceded by | Mark Pryor |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arkansas's 4th district |
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| In office January 3, 2013 – January 3, 2015 |
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| Preceded by | Mike Ross |
| Succeeded by | Bruce Westerman |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Thomas Bryant Cotton
May 13, 1977 Dardanelle, Arkansas, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse |
Anna Peckham
(m. 2014) |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Harvard University (BA, JD) |
| Military service | |
| Branch/service | United States Army |
| Years of service |
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| Rank | Captain |
| Unit |
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| Battles/wars | |
| Awards |
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Thomas Bryant Cotton (born May 13, 1977) is an American politician, attorney, and former Army officer serving as the junior United States senator from Arkansas since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015.
Cotton was elected as the U.S. representative for Arkansas's 4th congressional district in 2012 and to the Senate at age 37 in 2014, defeating two-term Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor.
Contents
Early life and education
Thomas Bryant Cotton was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle, Arkansas. His father, Thomas Leonard "Len" Cotton, was a district supervisor in the Arkansas Department of Health, and his mother, Avis (née Bryant) Cotton, was a schoolteacher who later became principal of their district's middle school. Cotton's family had lived in rural Arkansas for seven generations, and he grew up on his family's cattle farm. He attended Dardanelle High School, where he played on the local and regional basketball teams; standing 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) tall, he was usually required to play center.
Cotton was accepted to Harvard College after graduating from high school in 1995. At Harvard, he majored in government and was a member of the editorial board of The Harvard Crimson, often dissenting from the liberal majority. In articles, Cotton addressed what he saw as "sacred cows" such as affirmative action. He graduated with an A.B. magna cum laude in 1998 after only three years of study. Cotton's senior thesis focused on The Federalist Papers.
After graduating from Harvard College in 1998, Cotton was accepted into a master's program at Claremont Graduate University. He left in 1999, saying that he found academic life "too sedentary", and instead enrolled at Harvard Law School. He graduated with a J.D. degree in 2002.
Career
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Cotton spent one year as a law clerk for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He then went into private practice as an associate at law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C., until he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2005.
Military service
On January 11, 2005, Cotton enlisted in the United States Army. He entered Officer Candidate School (OCS) in March 2005 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in June. He completed the U.S. Army Ranger Course, a 62-day small unit tactics and leadership program that earned him the Ranger tab, and Airborne School to earn the Parachutist Badge.
In May 2006, Cotton was deployed to Baghdad as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division. In Iraq, he led a 41-man air assault infantry platoon in the 506th Infantry Regiment, and planned and performed daily combat patrols. In December 2006 Cotton was promoted to first lieutenant and reassigned to the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, as a platoon leader.
From October 2008 to July 2009, Cotton was deployed to eastern Afghanistan. He was assigned within the Train Advise Assist Command – East at its Gamberi forward operating base (FOB) in Laghman Province as the operations officer of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), where he planned daily counter-insurgency and reconstruction operations.
Cotton was honorably discharged in September 2009. During his time in the service, he completed two combat deployments overseas, was awarded a Bronze Star, two Army Commendation Medals, a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Ranger tab, an Afghanistan Campaign Medal, and an Iraq Campaign Medal.
Following his active duty service, Cotton went to work for management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
In July 2010, Cotton entered the Army Reserve (USAR). He was discharged in May 2013.
2006 letter to The New York Times
In June 2006, while stationed in Iraq, Cotton gained public attention after writing an open letter to the editor of The New York Times, asserting three journalists had violated "espionage laws" by publishing an article detailing a classified government program monitoring terrorists' finances. The Times did not publish Cotton's letter, but it was published on Power Line, a conservative blog that had been copied on the email. In the letter, Cotton called for the journalists to be prosecuted for espionage "to the fullest extent of the law" and incarcerated. He accused the newspaper of having "gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis". Cotton's claims circulated online and were reprinted in full elsewhere. According to Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University in 2011, the Espionage Act has never been used against journalists. Rosen argued accusing investigative journalists of engaging in espionage is "essentially saying that they’re working for another power, or aiding the enemy. That is culture war tactics taken to an extreme."
U.S. House of Representatives
Shortly after Cotton's Afghanistan deployment ended, he was introduced to Chris Chocola, a former congressman and the president of Club for Growth, a Republican political action committee that became one of Cotton's top contributors. Cotton considered a run against incumbent Democratic U.S. senator Blanche Lincoln in 2010 but declined due to lack of donors and believing it was premature.
Cotton ran for Congress in Arkansas's 4th congressional district after Democratic incumbent Mike Ross announced in 2011 that he would not seek reelection.
Elections
2012
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In September 2011, Arkansas Times editor Max Brantley, criticized Cotton for a 1998 article he wrote in The Harvard Crimson in which he questioned the internet's value as a teaching tool in the classroom, saying the internet had "too many temptations" to be useful in schools and libraries. Cotton later said the internet had matured since he wrote the article.
Beth Anne Rankin, the 2010 Republican nominee, and John David Cowart, who was backed by Louisiana businessman and philanthropist Edgar Cason, were the only other Republican candidates in the race after Marcus Richmond dropped out in February 2012. In the May 22 primary, Cotton won the Republican nomination with 57.6% of the vote; Rankin finished second with 37.1%.
The Club for Growth endorsed Cotton. Of the $2.2 million Cotton raised for his campaign, Club for Growth donors accounted for $315,000 and were his largest supporters. Senator John McCain also endorsed him. Cotton was supported by both the Tea Party movement and the Republican establishment.
In the November 6 general election, Cotton defeated state senator Gene Jeffress, 59.5% to 36.7%. He was the second Republican since Reconstruction Era of the United States to represent the 4th district. The first, Jay Dickey, held it from 1993 to 2001, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, whose residence was in the district at the time. On January 3, 2013, Cotton was sworn into the House of Representatives by Speaker John Boehner.
Tenure
As a freshman, Cotton became a vocal opponent of the Obama administration's foreign and domestic policies. He voted for an act to eliminate the 2013 statutory pay adjustment for federal employees, which prevented a 0.5% pay increase for all federal workers from taking effect in February 2013. Cotton voted against the 2013 Farm Bill over concerns about waste and fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, voting later that month to strip funding from that program. He also voted against the revised measure, the Agricultural Act of 2014, which expanded crop insurance and a price floor for rice farmers.
Cotton accused Obama of presenting a "false choice" between the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and war. Cotton was also criticized in some media outlets for underestimating what successful military action against Iran would entail. Cotton said, "the president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That's simply not the case." Drawing a comparison to President Clinton's actions in 1998 during the Bombing of Iraq, he elaborated: "Several days' air and naval bombing against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior. For interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions." On July 21, 2015, Cotton and Mike Pompeo claimed to have uncovered the existence of secret side agreements between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on procedures for inspection and verification of Iran's nuclear activities under the JCPOA. Obama administration officials acknowledged the existence of agreements between Iran and the IAEA on the inspection of sensitive military sites, but denied that they were "secret side deals", calling them standard practice in crafting arms-control pacts and saying the administration had provided information about them to Congress.
Committee assignments
- Committee on Financial Services
- Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit
- Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade
- Committee on Foreign Affairs
- Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa
- Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
U.S. Senate
Elections
2014
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On August 6, 2013, Cotton announced he would challenge Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor for his seat in the United States Senate. Stuart Rothenberg of Roll Call called Pryor the most vulnerable senator seeking reelection in 2014. Cotton was endorsed by the conservative Club for Growth PAC, Senator Marco Rubio, the National Federation of Independent Business, and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who campaigned for Cotton. The Associated Press called the race for Cotton immediately after the polls closed; he received 56.5% of the vote to Pryor's 39.4%. Cotton was sworn into office on January 6, 2015.
As a U.S. senator, Cotton has received multiple death threats. In 2018, Adam Albrett of Fairfax County, Virginia, was arrested for "faxing death threats" against President Donald Trump and members of Congress, including Cotton. Police traced the fax to Albrett using the phone number in the fax header.
In October 2019, local authorities charged James Powell, a 43-year-old Arkansas resident, with "first-degree terroristic threatening" after an investigation by U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI. The felony charge carries a maximum six-year prison sentence and $10,000 fine. Powell also threatened Arkansas Representative Rick Crawford with death. In January 2020, 78-year-old Henry Edward Goodloe was sentenced to two years' probation for sending Cotton a threatening letter and a package containing white powder. Goodloe admitted to mailing an envelope containing white powder to Cotton's office, with a note stating, "You ignored me. Maybe this will get your attention." The Senate mail facility intercepted the letter, which included Goodloe's home address, and alerted a hazardous response team which determined the powder was unbleached flour and starch.
2020
Cotton was reelected, defeating Libertarian challenger Ricky Dale Harrington Jr. Though Cotton outperformed President Donald Trump in the concurrent presidential election by 4.1%, the election saw an undervote of 26,000 compared to the presidential election. Harrington's 33.5% finish is the best ever for a Libertarian candidate in a U.S. Senate election by vote percentage, surpassing the previous record set in 2016 in Alaska, and also by total number of votes (399,390, surpassing the previous record of 369,807 set by Michael Cloud in Massachusetts in 2002). Per exit polls, this largely appears to be due to many Democrats voting for Harrington as there was no Democratic candidate on the ballot (82% of Democratic voters backed Harrington).
Tenure
Cassandra Butts nomination
In February 2015, Obama renominated Cassandra Butts, a former White House lawyer, to be the United States ambassador to the Bahamas. Her nomination was blocked by several senators. First, Ted Cruz placed a blanket hold on all U.S. State Department nominees. Cotton specifically blocked the nominations of Butts and ambassador nominees to Sweden and Norway after the Secret Service leaked private information about a fellow member of Congress, although that issue was unrelated to those nominees. Cotton eventually released his holds on the nominees to Sweden and Norway, but kept his hold on Butts's nomination.
Butts told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that she had gone to see Cotton about his objections to her nomination and said he had told her that because he knew that Obama and Butts were friends, it was a way to "inflict special pain on the president", Bruni said. Cotton's spokeswoman did not dispute Butts's characterization. Butts died on May 26, 2016, still awaiting a Senate vote.
Trump administration
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During Trump's presidency, Cotton was characterized as a Trump loyalist. He frequently met with Trump's staff during the transition period, and according to Steve Bannon, suggested John F. Kelly as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. Bannon told The New Yorker in November 2017, "Next to Trump, he's the elected official who gets it the most—the economic nationalism. Cotton was the one most supportive of us, up front and behind the scenes, from the beginning. He understands that the Washington élite—this permanent political class of both parties ... needs to be shattered." In the same article, Karl Rove, a senior figure in the George W. Bush administration, said Cotton was a more consensual figure than someone like Bannon.
In a CNN interview shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Cotton denied that waterboarding is a form of torture. He said "tough calls" such as allowing it were an option Trump was ready to take: "If experienced intelligence officials come to the President of the United States and say we think this terrorist has critical information and we need to obtain it and this is the only way we can obtain it—it's a tough call. But the presidency is a tough job. And if you're not ready to make those tough calls, you shouldn't seek the office. Donald Trump's a pretty tough guy, and he's ready to make those tough calls". During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said the United States should resume the use of waterboarding.
In September 2020, Trump shortlisted Cotton as a potential Supreme Court nominee, but ultimately chose Amy Coney Barrett instead. With less than two months to the next presidential election, Cotton supported an immediate Senate vote on Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. In March 2016, Cotton refused to consider Obama's Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election year, providing his rationale with these questions: "Why would we cut off the national debate on the next justice? Why would we squelch the voice of the populace? Why would we deny the voters a chance to weigh in on the makeup of the Supreme Court?"
In early January 2021, Cotton announced he would not support any attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election during the joint congressional certification of Electoral College results on January 6, 2021.
Committee assignments
Current
- Committee on Armed Services
- Subcommittee on Airland (Chair, 2015–2021; Ranking Member, 2021–present)
- Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities (2015–2017)
- Subcommittee on Personnel (2015–2017)
- Subcommittee on Seapower (2017–present)
- Subcommittee on Strategic Forces (2017–present)
- Select Committee on Intelligence
- Committee on the Judiciary (2021–present)
- Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights
- Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism (Ranking Member)
- Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety
- Subcommittee on Intellectual Property
- Joint Economic Committee
Previous
- Special Committee on Aging (2015–2017)
- Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (2015–2021)
- Committee on the Budget (2018–2019)
Caucuses
- Senate Republican Conference
Political positions
Cotton is considered politically conservative.
In January 2019, Cotton was one of 31 Republican senators to cosponsor the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, a bill introduced by John Cornyn and Ted Cruz that would grant individuals with concealed carry privileges in their home state the right to exercise this right in any other state with concealed carry laws while concurrently abiding by that state's laws. In June 2022, Cotton introduced the "Stop Gun Criminals Act", which sought to increase minimum sentences for existing offenses but provided no new regulation.
On February 7, 2017, in the presence of President Trump, Cotton and Senator David Perdue proposed a new immigration bill, the RAISE Act, which would limit the family route or chain migration. The bill would set a limit on the number of refugees offered residency at 50,000 a year and would remove the Diversity Immigrant Visa. Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain expressed opposition to the bill.
Cotton opposed the Affordable Care Act, saying in 2012 that "the first step is to repeal that law, which is offensive to a free society and a free people".
In 2012, Cotton said, "Strong families also depend on strong marriages, and I support the traditional understanding of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. I also support the Defense of Marriage Act."
In August 2013, Cotton voted against the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013, which sets interest rates on student loans to the 10-year Treasury note plus a varying markup for undergraduate and graduate students. He preferred a solution that ended what he called the "federal-government monopoly on the student-lending business", referring to the provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that changed the way the federal government makes student loans.
Personal life
Cotton married attorney Anna Peckham in 2014. They have two children.
Cotton has said that Walter Russell Mead, Robert D. Kaplan, Henry Kissinger, Daniel Silva, C. J. Box, and Jason Matthews are among his favorite authors.
In 2019, Cotton published a book about the role of the Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, partly based on his service in that unit as an officer.
Electoral history
| Year | Office | Party | Primary | General | Result | Swing | |||||||
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| Total | % | P. | Total | % | ±% | P. | |||||||
| 2012 | U.S. Representative | Republican | 20,899 | 57.55% | 1st | 154,149 | 59.53% | +19.38% | 1st | Won | Gain | ||
| 2014 | U.S. Senator | Republican | 478,819 | 56.50% | N/A | 1st | Won | Gain | |||||
| 2020 | Republican | 793,871 | 66.53% | +10.03% | 1st | Won | Hold | ||||||
Military awards
Cotton's military awards and decorations include:
 Combat Infantryman Badge |
 Parachutist Badge |
 Air Assault Badge |
 Ranger Tab |
 101st Airborne Division Combat Service ID Badge |
| 506th Infantry Regimental Distinctive Insignia |
 Bronze Star Medal |
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 Army Achievement Medal |
 Air Force Achievement Medal |
 National Defense Service Medal |
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 Global War on Terrorism Service Medal |
 Army Service Ribbon |
 Overseas Service Ribbon |
.svg){kind=small} NATO Medal |
See also
In Spanish: Tom Cotton para niños
- List of members of the American Legion
