Sen. Tom Cotton is headed to New Hampshire, the nation’s first primary state, to cultivate support for a potential 2024 president bid, planning to campaign for a Republican Senate candidate and raise money for the party.
Cotton in May will headline a major fundraising dinner for the Hillsborough County Republican Committee that typically draws rising GOP stars and White House hopefuls. On the same trip, the Arkansas Republican will deliver a keynote speech to the New Hampshire GOP convention. This month, the Cotton campaign will air a television advertisement in New Hampshire, narrated by the senator, promoting GOP 2020 Senate contender Don Bolduc.
“Future presidential candidates spending election year campaigning for the local ticket in New Hampshire is a time-honored tradition. It’s never too early to make friends and lay the foundation, often years in the making, for a future campaign here,” Jim Merrill, a New Hampshire Republican operative, told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
Cotton, 42, is up for reelection to the Senate this year but does not have a Democratic opponent.
Freed from the responsibility of running a reelection race, the senator plans to travel the country to boost Republican congressional candidates who, like him, are combat veterans. Bolduc, an Army veteran, fought in Afghanistan. Cotton also is focused on forging relationships that could be critical to a run for higher office and padding his war chest for a future campaign. Cotton expects to finish the year with up to $7 million in the bank.
Cotton intervened in the 2018 election cycle twice to quash the political careers of Democrats who might have proven formidable challengers against him in this year’s Senate race.
Cotton’s political action committee, Republican Majority Fund, invested roughly $500,000 in the midterm elections to defeat Clarke Tucker, the Democrat who ran against Republican Rep. French Hill in Arkansas’s 2nd Congressional District. The senator’s team identified Tucker as a potential 2020 challenger and responded with digital and direct mail advertising while also fielding a video tracker to follow Tucker on the trail.
Democrat Josh Mahoney, a nonprofit executive, was Cotton’s next target.
Last year, after Mahoney announced plans to run against the senator, Cotton’s leadership PAC quickly compiled a trove of opposition research. But, rather than using it immediately, his team kept its powder dry until the filing deadline to run for Senate in Arkansas in 2020 closed and Mahoney was the only Democratic candidate. At that point, Cotton deployed the opposition research against Mahoney, who immediately dropped out of the race.
Cotton’s first foray into national Republican politics after tending the home front was in Wisconsin, where he supported combat veteran Jason Church, who was running in a special election to fill the vacant 7th Congressional District.
“Sen. Cotton is focused on electing conservative veterans,” said Brian Colas, a top Cotton political adviser. “Sen. Cotton will be campaigning for Gen. Bolduc, providing fundraising support, and running ads to mobilize independent New Hampshire voters.”
