Arkansas 4th District Congressman Tom Cotton announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate Tuesday (Aug. 6). He made the announcement in his home town of Dardanelle.
The Army veteran said it doesn't matter if he hasn't been in Washington D.C. long.
"I've served our country in other ways and other places and I can see from my services in the Army, in Iraq and Afganistan that Washington today is not working for Arkansans," Cotton said.
Cotton will take on Democrat incumbent Mark Pryor.
Pryor says he doesn’t care who runs against him in this election. All he says he's concerned with is running his own campaign.
"People ask me if I'm worried about it, 'no,'" Pryor said. "The people can certainly elect whoever they want and they know what they get with me, they get someone who reads the bill and listens to the folks back home."
The candidates have campaign ads and several groups are running negative commercials against both men. Pryor and Cotton are fighting for the top senate seat talking about each others voting record.
"I do think I'm going to have an opponent here who's completely out of touch with Arkansas," Pryor said. "He recently voted against the farm bill, which is Arkansas' number one industry, he voted against the student provision, which was by the way bipartisan."
Cotton said, "He's holding Arkansas farmers hostage, to his food stamp program that is out of control and is wasteful and abusive especially in other states like California, Illionios and New York that Arkansas tax payers are having to subsidize."
Cotton was voted in 2012 to the U.S. House of Representatives and Pryor has been in the Senate since 2002.