Yes, Northwest Arkansas, there really is a Tom Cotton, and he's not just that evil looking guy in the TV commercials.

Last Tuesday, I finally got to meet the first-term Republican congressman who wants to unseat 12-year incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat. He was kind enough to accept our editorial board's invitation to stop in when he was in our neck of the woods. That day, he spoke to other groups in the River Valley, Fayetteville and Rogers, but I appreciate him spending an hour letting us get to know him. We've done the same thing with Pryor, and hope to get more time with both men before the November showdown.

Cotton represents Arkansas' Fourth Congressional District, which primarily covers the southwest corner of the state but also juts up into Madison, Johnson, Franklin and Newton counties. Still, when it comes to a guy wanting to be the state's next U.S. senator -- and one who believes Arkansans should fire the two-term senator they have -- I've long had a sense Cotton is really an unknown quantity for many Arkansans.

We visited about Medicare, which he said is easy to demagogue, but the nation must face the fact the program will run out of money in the next dozen years without substantial overhaul. The next president, if he lasts two terms, will have to grapple with the failure of Medicare without action, Cotton said.

He gave the expected comments about Pryor talking a moderate game but voting liberal when he gets to Washington.

He defended his vote against the Farm Bill, which he called a "food stamp bill." It didn't have any serious reform in it.

He defended his vote against the Hurricane Sandy relief funding, saying most of the billions involved had little or nothing to do with relief. The bill was stacked with spending on pork projects, he said.

All of those topics, of course, have been targets for criticism. Neither Pryor nor Cotton have really spent much of their own campaign funds on advertising yet, but millions of dollars from interests outside the state are pouring in with messages full of dramatic music, unflattering photos and testimonials from people helped or hurt by one candidate or the other.

Most Arkansans don't know Tom Cotton. More importantly, they don't feel like they know him. It's safe to say most Arkansans don't personally know Mark Pryor either, but when his dad, David, served as governor and U.S. senator and remains a popular political figure, that matters. The younger Pryor, too, earned his own constituencies with terms in the Arkansas Legislature and as Arkansas' attorney general, a post held by many who have had bigger political aspirations.

Cotton graduated from Dardanelle High School in 1995 and stayed gone from Arkansas nearly 15 years for military service, education and career. In a state with names like Clinton, Bumpers, Rockefeller and many others that span decades of public service, he's a newbie. He took office in Congress in January 2013.

My sense is of Cotton's campaign (or those outside interests supporting it) is it's a campaign for Republican control of the U.S. Senate, but not yet a campaign for Tom Cotton. So far, he's just the guy in the suit with a war record Republican powers can package well enough to potentially get elected. Cotton lacks, at this stage, any real, personal connection to many Arkansas voters. He seems like an outsider with the right credentials being parachuted into his home state as part of a strategy to secure a national victory. That won't be enough to get him elected.

But it's a long time to Election Day, and Cotton is on the move to get out and meet his fellow Arkansans. Does he have the message and the personality to win them over?

In my view, he's behind in the polls because he and his campaign haven't yet established his Arkansas connections in the minds of the state's voters. Many will vote on ideology alone -- and he's got that by the buckets. He'll have to win over others, however, through down-home, retail politics.

That will rely more on who he is -- and how comfortably he fits in at coon suppers, tomato festivals and county fairs -- than on a Harvard degree, a military record or an "R" beside his name.

Commentary on 04/21/2014