Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton is not opposed to joining Donald Trump as his running mate in 2016.
Cotton was once considered a dark horse in this cycle’s GOP primary and may already have designs on running for the nation’s highest office in 2020. But in November, he told U.S. News & World Report that he plans to vote for “the nominee,” despite a deleted retweet that was critical of Trump and supportive of a third party.
“Would you accept an offer to be Trump’s running mate?” asked U.S. News.
“[Laughing] I haven’t seen it floated out there,” Cotton said. “Like I said, I’ve been focusing my political work on making sure that we hold the Senate and focus the rest of the time on my son.”
Cotton was more forthcoming about his support for Trump.
“I’ve said all along, I’ll support the nominee, because we can’t afford another term of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy or for that matter, economic policy at home,” Cotton told U.S. News & World Report. “And now Donald Trump’s the presumptive nominee. So we obviously need to do some work to unify around our common and shared principles and Donald’s got the responsibility and opportunity to do that in the coming weeks.”
Cotton, a “Harvard-educated infantryman” as South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy calls him, also shot down the idea that conservatives concerned about Trump should back a third party candidate.
“I think it’s important that the Republican Party remain the home of conservatives and that the best way to advance conservative principles is to elect Republicans, up and down the ballot,” Cotton said.
Cotton also declined to tell U.S. News & World Report whether he could see himself running for president in four years.
“We haven’t even gotten our nominees yet in this presidential cycle, so I don’t want to speculate about the future,” Cotton told U.S. News & World Report. “All I’m focused on now is making sure we keep the Senate in Republican hands.”
