Republican congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Tom Cotton met with supporters in Little Rock on Saturday to announce his campaign's Veterans for Cotton Coalition and to question Democratic opponent Sen. Mark Pryor's commitment to veterans.
Veterans for Cotton will recruit ex-service members from around Arkansas to volunteer with the campaign, running phone drives, going door to door to speak with voters and promoting his platform to veterans' groups. A news release from the campaign states that the coalition already has 400 volunteers representing all branches of the armed forces.
Cotton served nearly five years in the U.S. Army, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. During the announcement, he criticized the federal government's handling of the recent Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals scandal and the Obama administration's proposed 2015 budget, which would reduce defense spending.
Cotton said Pryor was out of touch with the needs of Arkansas veterans.
"For five years, Mark Pryor has been a loyal foot soldier for the Obama agenda in Washington," Cotton said at the announcement, held at the Arkansas Vietnam Veterans' Memorial on the state Capitol grounds. "Arkansas needs a loyal soldier for Arkansas values."
Erik Dorey, a Pryor spokesman, said the senator has shown a commitment to veterans by voting for and introducing bills to expand their benefits and job opportunities and by co-sponsoring the Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014 to overhaul the VA. Arkansas' representatives, including Cotton, co-sponsored the House version.
Dorey said that since Cotton took office in January 2013, he has yet to introduce legislation on behalf of veterans.
"Tom Cotton deserves our thanks for wearing the uniform and serving our country," Dorey said. "But unfortunately, in Washington as a congressman, he hasn't been listening to Arkansans."
Linda Dahl, 56, of Mount Vernon went to support Cotton on Saturday.
Dahl is a 37-year veteran, most recently serving with the Arkansas Air National Guard's 189th Airlift Wing. She has three sons also in the armed forces: Her oldest served in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, her middle son is a chaplain with the Army National Guard and her youngest is stationed at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.
"We don't need community organizers," she said. "We don't need people with just charisma, we need people with leadership skills that know how to manage people, that know what their core values are, that know what the country's core values are and know how to put the two together. And they didn't learn it from a book, they learned it in the field."
A section on 07/27/2014