A Senate debate between Republican Rep. Tom Cotton and Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., grew personal Monday when Pryor said Cotton “thinks he’s entitled” to the seat.
More than halfway through the 90-minute debate, Pryor responded to a question about his accomplishments in Washington by pointing out that Cotton, a first-term member of Congress, commissioned a poll to evaluate his odds in the Senate race before “he even knew where the bathrooms were.”
“You don’t have the reputation, the ability or the desire to get things done in Washington,” Pryor said pointedly to Cotton.
Cotton responded by highlighting his military service, which included tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You can learn a little bit more there than you can in the halls of Congress,” Cotton said.
The moment was among the most tense in the debate, which marked the first side-by-side match-up between Cotton and Pryor, who were joined also by two third-party candidates.
But that line of attack by Pryor was not out of step with the tone of his re-election campaign, which has attacked Cotton as an overly ambitious youngster looking for a promotion before he’s paid his dues.
Invoking “entitlement” has required Pryor and his campaign to walk a fine line: Pryor’s father, David Pryor, is a former senator and governor who is well-known in Arkansas and who has played a prominent role in his son’s re-election campaign.
Cotton, for his part, has focused on tying Pryor to President Obama and his policies, which remain unpopular in Arkansas. Cotton mentioned the president and Pryor together in each of his responses Monday.
“Barack Obama said his policies are on the ballot, and they are,” Cotton said. “Here, they go by the name Mark Pryor.”
Pryor took note of Cotton’s focus on the president and attempted to defuse that line of attack.
“Clearly Rep. Cotton is running against one man,” Pryor said. “I’m running for 3 million Arkansans. That’s what this race is all about. I’m on your side.”
Public polling has lately shown Cotton gaining momentum in the race, which is among the key Senate battlegrounds in this midterm election cycle.
But even as Pryor has tried to distance himself from the president, he has not shrugged off every one of his policies, including Obamacare.
“I do support changes to the law, I do,” Pryor said Monday. “But I don’t want to go back to those days” before the Affordable Care Act, he added.
