From the Arkansas Advocate:
Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton won reelection to his Arkansas seat Tuesday, fending off a challenge from Democrat Hallie Shoffner who focused on how tariffs and rising fuel prices were hurting the state’s farmers.
Cotton defeated Shoffner and Libertarian Jeff Wadlin, winning a third term to the Senate. The Associated Press called the race at 9:40 p.m.
With 84% of the vote counted, Cotton had a 12-point lead over Shoffner with nearly 396,000 votes. Shoffner received nearly 307,000 votes and Wadlin received more than 22,000.
In a statement, Cotton said he will “continue fighting for good jobs, safe streets, secure borders, and a strong military.”
“Tonight, Arkansans voted to defend the conservative values of faith, family, and freedom that have made our state great,” Cotton said.
Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the chamber’s third-ranked Republican, was elected to the U.S. House in 2012 and unseated Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor in 2014.
Cotton easily won reelection in 2020 against only a Libertarian opponent after the Democratic candidate dropped out after the filing period.
A close ally of President Donald Trump, Cotton has been a vocal supporter of strict immigration enforcement and the ongoing war in Iran. He has also touted his support for the growth of Arkansas’ defense industry, including an upcoming multibillion-dollar artillery ammunition plant in Pine Bluff.
Cotton and Republican allies had heavily outspent Shoffner in the race, with ads portraying her as soft on immigration and too closely allied with national Democrats like former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Most political forecasters predicted Cotton’s win, though the Almanac of American Politics moved Arkansas’ U.S. Senate race from safe to “likely” Republican in October. Democrats have not won a statewide or U.S. House race in Arkansas since 2010.
“The people in Arkansas are worth fighting for,” Shoffner posted on Facebook Tuesday night. “Believe in Arkansas.”
Shoffner chose to challenge Cotton after she closed her family’s 150-year-old Jackson County soybean farm due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Pitching herself as an everyday Arkansan without ties to special interest groups, Shoffner’s campaign gained national attention for her social media presence and her focus on her rural background.
Shoffner has regularly criticized Cotton’s past votes against the Farm Bill, the federal agriculture spending and policy package that Congress regularly renews. Cotton has said past versions of the bill allocated too much money to food aid programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Senate Democrats have opposed the current Farm Bill recently endorsed by the Senate Agriculture Committee because of SNAP cuts, but Shoffner said she would have voted to advance the bill to give farmers financial aid.
SNAP will face spending cuts and higher administrative costs as of Jan. 1 thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. The sweeping federal tax and spending legislation, which Cotton supported and Trump signed last year, will also cut Medicaid spending starting in 2027. Medicaid serves more than 800,000 low-income and disabled Arkansans.
During their campaigns, Shoffner and Wadlin portrayed Cotton as uninterested in the needs of everyday Arkansans and criticized his absence from two debates hosted by nonpartisan TV outlets in October.
Cotton and Shoffner had agreed to a debate hosted by Salem Media Group, a conservative Christian outlet, before it retracted the offer in October.
Wadlin said he was not invited to the Salem Media debate.
Cotton had distanced himself from Trump on some issues, including opposing the president’s plan to allow more foreign beef imports.
Trump also criticized Cotton for opposing a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent. The president posted Cotton’s cellphone number in a post on his Truth Social account over the dispute.
