GOP’s Tom Cotton Outspending Dem Rival 65-1 in State Trump Won by 31 Points - Newsweek

The Arkansas U.S. Senate race was hardly on anyone’s radar as a competitive contest. Then a poll put a Republican Senate seat that had long looked safe on the political map and got operatives on both sides paying attention.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton and the groups backing him have put about $13.6 million into advertising this cycle as he seeks a third term on November 3. Hallie Shoffner, the Democrat trying to unseat him, and her allies have spent $208,703.

So why is so much money being spent on a race that few expected to be competitive? Republicans say the spending is about defining an unknown challenger and showing strength. Democrats say it reflects fear. Nobody can agree on what the margin in November will be.

No political operative outside Arkansas paid much attention to the race until August. A February GrayHouse poll, conducted for America One Policies, a group affiliated with Cotton, showed him leading 58 to 36, a result that surprised no one.

Then Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College released a poll of 1,217 likely voters on August 19 putting Shoffner at 47 percent and Cotton at 44, inside a margin of error of 4.7 points. The same survey had Trump's disapproval in the state at 53 percent against 46 percent approval, his worst showing there.

Other numbers cut the other way. J.L. Partners, surveying 803 likely voters from August 14 to 18, found Cotton ahead 51 to 35. Shoffner's own pollster, 2040 Strategy Group, had her down 3 in July. Polymarket and Kalshi have both sat near 95 percent for Cotton.

The Cook Political Report rates the race Solid Republican; Sabato's Crystal Ball and Decision Desk HQ call it Safe Republican.

"Polling results can be dependent on a number of factors, therefore I typically caution against putting too much focus on a single poll, and instead look at the broader body of available data in order to assess where a race is," Robert Coon told Newsweek. Coon is managing partner at Impact Management Group, an Arkansas firm that works with Republican candidates, and he helped build and analyze the Hendrix poll.

Matt Klink, a Republican strategist, thinks the spread in itself is the finding. "The polls measure mood. The forecasters and markets measure math. Both can be right," he told Newsweek. "When surveys, some credible and others less so, show a 19 point spread, you're looking at soft, persuadable voters, not a settled race."

Shoffner is a sixth-generation farmer from Jackson County who closed her family's soybean operation last year. She had never run for anything before this cycle, and she took the March primary with 78 percent.

Most Arkansans are meeting her through Cotton's commercials, which lean on her own recorded words: a remark about trading five Americans for one undocumented worker, and a June statement that she would vote to defund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it currently exists. She has since said she wants the agency reformed rather than defunded.

"Hallie Shoffner admitted on video that she would defund ICE, and then she told Arkansans why—she said she would trade five Americans for just one illegal alien," James Arnold, a spokesman for the Cotton campaign, said in a statement to Newsweek. "The Cotton campaign believes her personal statements on immigration are so extreme that every Arkansan in the state should see the videos for themselves, and we are delighted to have the resources to make sure they do."

Coon reads the buy as textbook. "The Democratic candidate, Hallie Shoffner, is relatively unknown to voters, therefore defining her is the smart move strategically," he said. "I think the spending by the Cotton campaign and allied groups is consistent with that strategy."

Klink sees a clock running. "The smartest money in politics defines an opponent before she can define herself," he said. Shoffner has raised about $2.3 million for the cycle; Cotton has spent roughly six times that on air. "Most Arkansans will meet her for the first time through his commercials, and his team knows it."

There is a wrinkle Punchbowl flagged. Shoffner airs so few spots of her own that the millions spent attacking her may be introducing her to voters who had never heard her name.

Jay Barth, emeritus professor of politics at Hendrix College, helped analyze the poll that started all this. He would not settle on one explanation for the spending.

"I don't know the grand answer there," Barth told Newsweek. "There could be several things going on."

Maybe internal numbers show something tighter than the public ones. Or maybe it is simpler than that: Cotton ended June with about $9.9 million in the bank, money stacked up over years. "He recognizes it's a dangerous time for any Republican incumbent, and it's better, safer to go ahead and spend that money," Barth said.

His third possibility is the least flattering to the campaign, which is that the ads are not working. "It could be that despite a lot of spending, it's just not moving voters, because there's so much counterweight on the other side, because of the Trump negative numbers."

Barth thinks Cotton also carries a durability problem of his own making. A career spent on Washington and foreign policy has left him thin on political identity back home. "It's been difficult for him to develop his own personality, politically," he said.

Cotton chairs the Intelligence Committee and, as conference chairman, is the third-ranking Senate Republican. Punchbowl reported that a leadership shuffle in 2027 could put him in line for whip. Barth sees that in the ad buy too. "If he were to decide at a later time that he wanted to seek national, higher office, then he would be able to say even in this very difficult cycle, I performed pretty well."

Klink puts it less delicately. "He won't lose sleep over one Hendrix poll," he said. "He will lose sleep over giving donors, Senate colleagues and 2028 primary voters any reason to think a no-name farmer from Newport nearly took him out in a 30-point Trump state."

Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, hears something else in all that money.

"There is an all-hands-on-deck panic in the Republican Party and nowhere is it more evident than places like Arkansas where no one thought any Democrat could win a race for dog catcher, let alone United States Senator," Kessler told Newsweek.

"I've been around enough politicians to know that they don't pile millions of dollars into ads unless they are frightened," he said. "That's what is happening to Tom Cotton in Arkansas."

He calls Shoffner an excellent candidate who has been operating under the radar, and he concedes the race is a long shot. Then comes the warning.

"In a year in which a political wave happens, there are always a handful of incumbents who are asleep at the wheel and wake up defeated on Wednesday morning," Kessler said. "This race is still a longshot for Democrats, but Tom Cotton just rang the alarm bell."

What he is really watching is everywhere else. "What does this mean in other places like Iowa, Alaska, Kansas, Texas, North Carolina, Maine, and Ohio? Fasten your seat belts because it's going to be a bumpy ride. Arkansas shouldn't be anywhere near close."

Republicans keep pointing at the other column. Shoffner had $863,578 on hand at the end of June, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has not shown up.

"The bigger story on the spending from my standpoint is the lack of it by Shoffner and her allies," Coon said. "While she may lack resources, the decision by national Democratic groups not to spend tells me that they don't think this race is actually competitive."

Klink reaches the same conclusion by a different road. "Their money is going to Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and the other seats that could decide the majority. Shoffner gets good press and no reinforcements, which makes her a message candidate the DSCC will praise and never fund."

On Cotton's side of the ledger, two super PACs, America One and Arkansans for Democracy and Justice, have spent more than $3 million between them on ads and texts, according to the Arkansas Advocate.

The 2020 result is useless as a baseline. No Democrat filed that year. Cotton faced a Libertarian, Ricky Dale Harrington Jr., spent roughly $900,000 to Harrington's $25,000, and won by 33 points.

Barth, the Hendrix College professor, prefers a longer yardstick. "Democrats haven't gotten 40 percent statewide since 2014," he said. "Anything north of 40 percent for a Democrat shows progress against the Republicans. Conversely, anything under 60 is poor performance." He notes that Harrington took 33 percent and carried a number of counties, which makes Cotton's floor murkier than the 2020 headline suggests. A Shoffner finish in the mid-40s, Barth said, would be a dramatic overperformance against where the campaign started.

Klink's threshold sits higher, and he reaches for a different race. Arkansas Senator John Boozman beat a Democratic opponent by nearly 35 points in 2022. "Anything under 20 points for Mr. Cotton signals erosion," Klink said. "Anything in single digits, with this kind of money spent, should set off alarms across the GOP. A tight race here would mean Trump's drag reaches deep into the reddest parts of the map."

Coon, the Republican operative, won't accept the premise. A slimmer November margin, he said, would be "more of a battle scar earned by pushing through in a tough political environment" than a signal about anything ahead.

"Is Arkansas immune to some of the downward pressure coming from voter dissatisfaction? No, not completely. But the impact here will be far less than in other parts of the country. Arkansas is still, on the whole, a red state and I don't expect that to change this November."

No Democrat has won a Senate race in Arkansas since 2008. Early voting starts October 19. Election Day is November 3.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Edward T. Cummins