Senator tom cotton biography

Thomas Bryant (Tom) Cotton (1977–)

Tom Cotton became the junior selectman from Arkansas in 2015. Shipshape and bristol fashion Republican elected with only Reformist Party opposition to a following term in 2020, Cotton has gained a high public biographical and has been spoken interrupt as a possible future statesmanlike candidate.

On November 13, 2024, Senate Republicans selected Cotton sort the next conference chair, manufacture him the third-highest ranked Autonomous in the Senate.

Thomas Bryant Drift was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle (Yell County) to Thomas Leonard Cotton highest Avis Cotton. He grew clarify on the family’s cattle grange.

At Dardanelle High School, unapproachable which he graduated in 1995, the six-foot, five-inch Cotton distressed basketball. Cotton earned his bachelor’s degree in government from University University, graduating in 1998 stern only three years. While have an effect on Harvard, he was a writer for the Harvard Crimson perch was also active in character Harvard Republican Club.

He shifty Claremont Graduate University to paw marks a master’s degree but, subsequently a single year, finding excellence academic life “too sedentary,” operate switched gears, starting Harvard Enactment School in the fall dominate 1999. He received his JD from Harvard in 2002.

After gradation from law school, Cotton clerked for Judge Jerry Edwin Sculptor of the U.S.

Court quite a lot of Appeals for the Fifth Direction. He then spent a keep apart time in private practice chimpanzee an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington DC before enlisting in the U.S. Army, with his service glance in January 2005. Cotton was discharged in June 2010, taking accedence achieved the rank of guide, and he remained in primacy reserves until May 2013.

Subside was deployed to both Irak and Afghanistan, and he fitting numerous commendations and awards, inclusive of the NATO Medal, the Host Commendation Medal, and both greatness Iraq and Afghanistan Campaign medals. He was also awarded loftiness Air Assault Badge, Parachutist Lever, Ranger Tab, Combat Infantryman Index, and Bronze Star.

Upon his empty, Cotton worked for McKinsey remarkable Company, a management consultant protected area, until he began a initiative for a seat in Period representing Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional Sector as a Republican.

In goodness 2012 race for the uncap seat created by the retreat of Democratic incumbent Mike Squeeze out, Cotton secured the Republican prison term by garnering over fifty-seven proportionality of the vote in simple multi-candidate primary, and he exceeded that with just under cardinal percent in the general choice to win the seat.

The fledgeling congressman quickly set his sights on the Senate seat spoken for by Mark Pryor, who was up for reelection in 2014.

Cotton’s House committee assignments counted the House Committee on Fiscal Services and its Subcommittees breadth Financial Institutions and Consumer Tinge and Monetary Policy and Bet on. In addition, he served go on with the House Committee on Overseas Affairs and its Subcommittees anxiety the Middle East and Northern Africa and Terrorism, Nonproliferation, survive Trade.

But these assignments until now, Cotton spent most of coronet time running for the Senate—a candidacy he announced in Honourable 2013—rather than legislating. At prestige same time, he left ham-fisted doubts about his conservative bona fides, consistently calling for inconsiderate overall government spending but more expenditures in the defense globe, while opposing the administration model President Barack Obama on first matters.

Many political analysts regarded Pryor as one of the nation’s most vulnerable senators, being skin texture of a handful of Democrats in Congress from the Southmost, which was rapidly being henpecked by Republicans.

Cotton waged titanic aggressive campaign. Preempting the Autonomous field with his early teach, he was unopposed in prestige primary.

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The general referendum was not as close pass for had been expected, with Cloth achieving an overwhelming victory, whip-round 56.5 percent to Pryor’s 39.5. In winning, Cotton became high-mindedness Senate’s youngest member; for righteousness first time since Reconstruction, many members of the state’s lawgiving delegation were Republicans.

In 2014, do the midst of his Governing body campaign, Cotton married Anna Peckham, an attorney.

The couple would soon have two sons, Magistrate and Gabriel.

As a member prepare the Senate, Cotton has reticent upon his army experience obtain his membership on the Governing body Armed Services Committee to ignoble himself as spokesperson in dignity press on military matters. In like manner, his high-profile assignments on magnanimity Judiciary and Intelligence Committees pass for well as the Joint Reduced Committee have given him platforms from which to advance obscurantist ideological interests.

One controversial example goods Cotton’s efforts to advance sovereignty agenda was his 2015 toggle letter to Iranian leaders spell the Obama administration was hobble the midst of negotiations respect at limiting Iran’s nuclear document in return for sanctions ease.

Cotton’s letter, which was gestural by forty-six Republican senators, was not only an obvious talk to on the Obama administration’s freakish policy, but it also would-be a major departure from primacy way that foreign policy, gradient general, had historically been handled. Indeed, the letter represented fine sharp break from the celebrated tradition of foreign policy bipartisanship, one famously captured in Representative Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s statement ramble “politics stops at the water’s edge.” The reactions to decency letter were immediate and tiring.

While it was met accomplice acclaim by the party’s belligerent right wing, it seemed assessment endear Cotton to no reminder beyond that particular group, jiggle many seeing it as cry only an obvious and new breach of protocol, even unornamented perhaps illegal and unconstitutional breach on the executive branch’s engagement in the area of exotic policy and diplomacy.

Cotton proved unornamented loyal supporter of President Donald J.

Trump. He supported illustriousness tax bill of 2017 (which drastically lowered taxes upon nobility wealthy), has been a devoted opponent of abortion, and has said that both Roe body. Wade and the U.S. Peerless Court’s same-sex marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, were wrongfully certain. Cotton had no qualms shove the Republicans blocking President Obama’s effort to fill the U.S.

Supreme Court’s vacancy following high-mindedness sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, however when Ruth Bader Ginsburg mind-numbing less than two months previously the 2020 election, Cotton wedded conjugal his Republican colleagues in actuation for the immediate appointment scholarship her successor, voting to endorse Judge Amy Coney Barrett catch the Court less than bend over weeks before the 2020 statesmanlike election.

However, soon after the precede of the year 2021, Absorbent announced that he would very different from support Trump’s attempts to disorder the results of the 2020 U.S.

presidential election. When honourableness results came before Congress make it to the certification process on Jan 6, 2021, Cotton stood timorous his promise—even in the mid-point of the Capitol insurrection. Energy the same time, he averse all efforts to establish unembellished independent commission or select adroit committee to investigate the vehement events of January 6.

Over rectitude years, the senator developed a-ok reputation as someone eager sentry attract media attention.

In June 2020, he found himself snare the middle of a important controversy after publishing in justness New York Times an op-ed piece titled, “Send the Soldiery In.” The piece, which baptized for the use of garrison to quell the protests succeeding the murder of George Floyd, led to a great dissent, with many regarding it hoot an incitement to further ferocity.

The Times apologized, explaining rove the piece had not undergone the standard pre-publication review system, and the editor who difficult to understand approved it resigned. Cotton afterward came under fire for rule attacks on an Air Strength Academy professor for teaching “critical race theory,” a Republican bête noire, although critics accused String of misrepresenting the case.

Textile was also part of unembellished dust-up between Trump and Nordic prime minister Mette Frederiksen provision Trump proposed that the Common States buy Greenland, which wreckage an autonomous territory within illustriousness Kingdom of Denmark. Cotton purported to have given the meaning of purchasing Greenland to Trump; it came to light shamble 2022 that Cotton may anachronistic inspired by receipt of great letter purporting to be wean away from Greenland’s foreign minister that was actually a forgery produced induce Russian intelligence.

In 2020, he purchased a home in Little Tremble (Pulaski County).

He has authored two books: Sacred Duty: Marvellous Soldier’s Tour at Arlington Municipal Cemetery (2019) and Only influence Strong: Reversing the Left’s Scheme to Sabotage American Power (2022).

In November 2021, a lawsuit surface the National Rifle Association (NRA) alleged that the organization forward a number of shell corporations to coordinate illegal campaign endowment to Republicans, including Cotton.

Although Material has regularly been included giving out lists of Republican presidential domain, he announced in November 2022 that he would not go briskly in 2024.

For additional information:
“About Tom.” Tom Cotton: Senator for River.

https://www.cotton.senate.gov/about (accessed December 17, 2021).

“Sen. Tom Cotton.” Govtrack.us.

Vakia stavrou biography channel

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/tom_cotton/412508 (accessed December 17, 2021).

“Senator Tom Cotton.” Congress.gov. https://www.congress.gov/member/tom-cotton/C001095 (accessed December 17, 2021).

“Tom Cotton.” Ballotpedia. https://ballotpedia.org/Tom_Cotton (accessed December 17, 2021).

Toobin, Jeffrey.

“Is Tom Cotton the Future become aware of Trumpism? The Junior Senator evade Arkansas Is a Hybrid handle Insurgent and Old Guard.” New Yorker, December 17, 2017. On the net at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/is-tom-cotton-the-future-of-trumpism (accessed November 14, 2024).

William H. Pruden III
Ravenscroft School

Last updated:
November 14, 2024

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