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W i t h U . S . S e n a t o r T o m C o t t o n By Lyndon Finney To say Tom Cotton runs in the fast lane might be considered an understatement. To wit: He graduated from Harvard College in three years. He currently holds the title of fastest senator and the second-fastest member of Congress as a result of his placing first among senators in the annual ACLI Capital Challenge, an invitational track race for teams representing the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government and the media. Cotton also won the race as a member of the House of Representatives. He possesses a rapid-fire but succinct and understandable speaking pattern that allows him to say far more in a 30-minute interview than most people can say in an hour. He had a short but successful military career, which included service in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He earned the rank of captain and received several awards, among them the Bronze Star Medal, which is awarded to any person who distinguishes himself or herself by heroic or meritorious achievement or service not involving participation in aerial flight and occurring after December 6, 1941, while serving in any capacity with the Armed Forces of the United States. He zipped through his first race for the House of Representatives in 2012 and two years later left incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor in the dust in his initial run for the Senate. And, there are many who think Cotton won’t stop running until he reaches the White House. So, who is this 6-foot 5-inch Arkansan who was labeled a “conservative superstar” in a 2014 edition of The Atlantic, a magazine covering news and analysis on national and international politics, business, culture, technology and life? He was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle, Arkansas, in the shadow of Mount Nebo, which rises 1,350 feet and offers sweeping views of the Arkansas River Valley. More than its height, the mountain is famous for its annual fried chicken festival. Cotton isn’t the only Dardanelle alumnus with a famous name. Professional golfer John Daly, known for his colorful attire and who has won both the PGA Championship and the British Open, hails from Dardanelle. So do Jim R. Caldwell, ironically the first Republican to serve in the Arkansas State Senate in the 20th century; and James Lee Witt, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cotton grew up on the family farm and says his childhood days were wonderful. “It’s a great place to grow up and a great place to have kids,” he told Truckload Authority. “It was a place where when I was a kid, you could leave your home early in the morning on your bike and not come back until sunset. The only trouble you had to worry about was the trouble you got into because a neighbor or church member or family friend was likely to call your parents and report back on you.” His father, Len, and mother, Avis, are both Arkansans and met while attending the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. They were, in Cotton’s words, “salt of the earth people.” His father is a Vietnam War veteran active in community affairs and his mother was a school teacher and later a principal. “She was a resident expert on all the [neighboring] families by the time she was done,” Cotton says, since she taught her students’ children and their grandchildren. “I couldn’t have asked for a more blessed upbringing.” What Cotton probably didn’t realize then was the impact his conservative upbringing would have on his political philosophy and his eventual path to Congress, even though politics was pretty much a taboo subject around the Cotton household. “I grew up in a traditional, conservative household not necessarily conservative politically, but a conservative upbringing where at an early age you were taught to take responsibility, take initiative, be disciplined, have a strong work ethic, love your country and do what you could to support it,” Cotton said. “Again, that was not a political upbringing, but I think a lot of those principles my parents instilled in me led naturally into military service in a time of war and ultimately into public service, as well.” Two things happened during high school that would also impact his future. First, Dardanelle High School had a strong junior ROTC program, and since Cotton’s father was a Vietnam veteran, he developed a high respect for the military. Second, Cotton started reading the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette at age 15 in 1992 when Bill Clinton was running for president. “Maybe that was because when you first start taking history you get interested in biography. Maybe it was because my governor was on the front page. So that was really the first time I took notice of politics. 1992 was exciting for me just as it was for many Arkansans.” But once Clinton was in office and introduced his Democratic agenda, 24 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2017
Brought to you by Cotton came to the realization that “I must be a Republican.” Cotton would go on to graduate from Harvard University with bachelor’s and law degrees, but what happened during his final year of law school changed the world and Tom Cotton. “It was the 9-11 attack. I was in my last year of law school. I thought I was going on to be a lawyer and live a long life in that field, but those attacks changed a direction in my life and I knew from that point forward I didn’t want to practice law anymore,” he said. “I wanted to join the Army and go to the front lines. I worked a little while to pay off my law school loans, but as much as anything else to get myself physically and mentally ready to join the Army and go to war.” In 2005, Cotton enlisted in the United States Army. In May 2006, he was deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom to Baghdad, where he was a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division. In October 2008, he headed to Afghanistan. There were several close calls. “I drive safely on the roads these days because I feel like I left eight of my nine lives in Baghdad,” he said. His military career over near the end of the decade, Cotton headed home but had no inkling he would become a politician. He laid his law degree aside and joined McKinsey & Company, an advisor and counselor to many of the world’s most influential businesses and institutions. “I knew coming out of the Army I did not want to go back to law,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with law; I just found from my time in the Army I enjoyed being part of a bigger team and working together, which is something that doesn’t always happen in law, especially as a junior lawyer. McKinsey gave me the chance for some business experience and to be exposed to main business functions like strategy and finance and marketing and operations, and my goal was to marry up my experience in the Army and my business experience but as things happen, circumstances kind of intervened.” In 2011, when results of the 2010 census were released, Yell County, Arkansas, Cotton’s home county, was moved from the Second Congressional District, which had just turned Republican with the election of Tim Griffin, to the Fourth Congressional District, where the sitting Democrat, Mike Ross, decided not to run for re-election in 2012. “Because the transition in Arkansas politics [from Democratic domination to a Republican majority] had occurred very quickly, I felt the district was ripe for the taking in a general election,” Cotton said. At the time, he was already planning to transition out of his job at McKinsey because at the consulting firm, there were no operational responsibilities and Cotton was looking for an opportunity to lead an organization. Election to the House would give him “a new and different kind of platform to serve the country again and hopefully do some important things” as a leader in Congress. In the 2012 general election, Cotton bested Arkansas State Sen. Gene Jeffress 59 percent to 37 percent. After two years in the House, Cotton decided he wanted to move to the upper chamber, but to do so he would have to take on an incumbent Democratic senator with a good reputation and pedigree, Mark Pryor, son of former Arkansas Governor and U.S. Senator David Pryor. “I wouldn’t have taken a shot at it if I didn’t think I was going to win. A lot of people suggested in my first term [in the House] that I should wait my time, but I decided that some of the problems we were facing didn’t really have much time to wait,” Cotton said. “When I was in the House I saw the biggest challenge that we faced in making progress aside from President [Barack] Obama was the Senate, particularly the way Senator Harry Reid was running the Senate as majority leader. And if I wanted to make progress on some of the issues on which I’d campaigned, we needed to win the Senate and if we didn’t win Arkansas, we weren’t going to take control of the Senate.” From his earliest days as a member of the House, Republican senators began to notice the impact Cotton was making. “They asked me to consider a campaign,” Cotton recalled. “I didn’t say I’d do it, but they asked me not to foreclose it. So [after] about six to eight months of observing the way Congress was working and especially the way the Senate was working — or not working — and after talking with my family, including my girlfriend who is now my wife, I decided TCA 2017 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 25
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