WASHINGTON — A white hard hat was the first item Tom Cotton placed on a shelf behind his desk in the Cannon House Office Building shortly before swearing to support and defend the U.S. Constitution as Arkansas’ newest member of the House of Representatives.

The hat came from P.T. Sanders, president of Danville-based telecommunications company, Arkwest Communications.

About 50 Arkwest employees worked for Cotton at polling stations during last year’s Republican primary election, Sanders said Thursday.

He and Cotton shared a frustration with government regulations that were hurting his business, Sanders said Thursday, after members of the 113th Congress took the oath of office.

“Usually when we come to Washington and try to explain the formulas to these guys, they get the deer-in-the-headlights look,” Sanders said.

“Tom understands, and even better, he cares.”

Sanders and his wife, son and the son’s fiancee attended a reception in Cotton’s office, during which Sanders predicted a bright future for the freshman congressman.

“He’s going to go a lot further than the 4th District,” he said.

Politico, a Washington, D.C.-based multimedia political journalism organization, has called Cotton the “most likely to succeed” among Capitol Hill freshman, citing his military background and his opposition to defense spending cuts.

“I certainly hope I can achieve success,” Cotton said in response to the Politico pronouncement.

He defined success as reducing the national debt and simplifying the tax code.

With the addition of Cotton, who served as a combat infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arkansas delegation now consists entirely of Republicans and veterans of the U.S. Army and members of the U.S. Army Reserve.

After being sworn in, Cotton joined the state’s three other House members in voting to keep Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as speaker of the House.

Three of Arkansas’ U.S. House members now serve on “A” committees, considered among the most powerful. Cotton is on Financial Services, Tim Griffin is on Ways and Means, and Steve Womack is on Appropriations.

On Thursday, Arkansas U.S. Sen. John Boozman, a Republican, was tapped to join the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Cotton said, “I’m proud to be a conservative reformer in the House.”

In a news release, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee skewered Cotton and other incoming Republicans as part of the “Republican Tea Party Majority” that will “put millionaires ahead of the middle class and dysfunction ahead of progress.”

Cotton dismissed the Democrats’ news release as “boilerplate” and said President Barack Obama, whom he accused of negotiating in bad faith in the end-of-the-year “fiscal cliff” talks, was more responsible than House Republicans for dysfunction in Washington.

Cotton said he found it hard to feel intimidated about being a freshman in Congress because of his experience “outside the wire” with enemy fire bearing down on him and his platoon.

Still, he said, he was glad that so many of his colleagues on the floor made introductions and offered to show him the ropes.

“I have help in any direction I turn,” he said.

For Arkansas’ three other House members, all returning for second terms, “it’s business as usual,” Womack said.

There is less of a “learning curve” returning to Washington for a second term, Rep. Rick Crawford said.

His biggest lesson as a freshman, he said, was the importance of developing relationships and properly timing legislative proposals.

“You think you’ve got a great idea, but the timing’s just not right,” he said.

As an example, Crawford pointed to a bill he filed in March that would have raised taxes on individuals who make more than $1 million a year on the condition that Congress pass a balanced budget amendment to the U.S.Constitution.

The legislation did not receive a single co-sponsor.

Nine months later, as part of the deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, Congress raised taxes on individuals with incomes higher than $400,000.

“It doesn’t look as crazy as it did in March,” Crawford said about his failed bill.

With this week’s agreement on taxes finalized, the new Congress will be able to focus on spending cuts, Griffin said.

“The needle on the deficit didn’t move,” after the tax agreement, he said. “The challenge is spending. There’s a lot more clarity now.”

Womack, who along with 84 Republicans voted for this week’s fiscal-cliff-avoiding measure, said he met Wednesday with Boehner to offer his services in coming legislative battles over raising the nation’s borrowing capacity, avoiding automatic across the-board cuts throughout federal agencies and providing funding for the remainder of the fiscal year when the current funding resolution expires in March.

Womack said he is braced for the toughest three months he’s faced as a legislator and predicted that Republicans will draw “deep lines in the sand” on those issues, which could run the risk of a government shutdown.

“The fiscal cliff discussion and debate was a scrimmage,” he said. “The varsity game is about to start.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/04/2013