SHERIDAN — Whether Tom Cotton chooses to run for a third term in the U.S. Senate is a decision he has yet to solidify, but he also declined to indicate whether he’s leaning toward or away from consideration to become former President Donald Trump’s running mate in this year’s election.
“It’s mostly out of speculation since we’re so far into the general election early in the year,” Cotton said after visiting eighth-graders at Sheridan Middle School on Tuesday. “I’m not sure who President Trump will pick, but I want him to win and I’ll do everything I can to make sure he does win.”
Now in the fourth year of his second six-year term in Washington, the Republican from Dardanelle made three stops in Arkansas on Tuesday. He also toured Anthony Hardwood Composites in Sheridan and the Arkansas Military and First Responders Academy in Little Rock.
“We’re super-excited to have him,” middle school Principal Deborah Mooney said. “We’ve watched him on Fox News, CNN, all the things, looking at him possibly running as a presidential candidate and then possibly we’re hearing on the news he might be a VP, so we’re pretty excited with some interest in him.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Cotton, 46, said he won’t be in the Senate as long as many of his colleagues have been. His future, he suggested, will depend on what happens with his children, now ages 7 and 9.
While Cotton encouraged the future adults to take part in the constitutional process of the country, he suggested they write down what they want to achieve in pencil, not in ink.
The reason for that, the Harvard graduate said, is that his plans to continue working as a lawyer changed following the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. He joined the Army four years later and served until 2009, when he went into management consulting and worked on his family’s farm before embarking on his political career.
One student asked Cotton if Washington should expand its budget to support public schools, and the senator answered that it’s primarily the responsibility of local and state governments.
“One of the main things I try to do is keep that responsibility where it belongs, in parents’ hands and their local officials and state officials,” Cotton said, adding Arkansas’ LEARNS Act championed by fellow Republican and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders passed in the 2023 state Legislature and has made positive impacts.
Cotton has made national headlines recently by joining 21 other members of Congress in filing an amicus brief in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the Securities and Exchange Commission’s funding plan for a Consolidated Audit Trail, which he said would collect private information of every American investor including those not suspected of wrongdoing. Fellow Sen. John Boozman, R-Arkansas, was among the signees.
Cotton also asked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to end the department’s contract with a Chinese-owned tutoring company, saying that data gathered on American service members poses a national security risk.
“Both of those issues are linked,” he said. “The Consolidated Audit Trail is something not many Arkansans know about, but it puts the personal data of Arkansans at risk if they are investing in mutual funds or index funds, whether through themselves or their pensions. To have all that information at the hands of the federal government is risky. The federal government has not done a good job, in many cases, of protecting that kind of personal data.”
Personal data accessed by the tutoring company could be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party, Cotton said. Instead, he suggested, American sources or those from allied countries could be utilized.
Cotton later announced Tuesday he asked President Joe Biden in a letter whether Jerusalem in part or as a whole is considered in the West Bank in a Feb. 1 executive order targeting Israeli settlers who reportedly attacked Palestinians with sanctions.
“If so, what parts of Jerusalem?” Cotton said. “Where are the borders within Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, that you are using for purposes of implementing the executive order?”
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, tells Sheridan Middle School students to write future plans “in pencil, not in ink,” as they may change. (Pine Bluff Commercial/I.C. Murrell)