The Arkansas Senate race kicked off with debates on Oct. 13 and 14, in which Republican candidate Tom Cotton and Democratic candidate Mark Pryor answered questions from top Arkansas news journalists. They were joined in the first debate by Green party representative Mark Swaney and Libertarian representative Nathan LaFrance. The second debate on Oct. 14 featured only Cotton and Pryor.
All candidates opened with strong statements about the state of the union, laying out ambitious promises for their post-election career as an Arkansas Senator.
“Wages are down, prices are up, Obamacare is a disaster and our national debt is almost $18 trillion,” Cotton said in his opening address. “Parents are worried about the kind of future we’re going to leave our kids. So am I.”
The first debate began with a lengthy discussion of the largely negative campaign advertisements being promoted by all parties on television, radio, USPS and the internet. In McCutcheon v. the Federal Election Commission, an April ruling by the Supreme Court, laws limiting the amount of money individuals can donate to political parties and political campaigns were struck down, opening the door to excessive spending by campaigning parties.
Pryor, despite including remarks about his Republican opponent in his opening comments, said he has been “turned off by the negative tone” inspired by this ruling. Pryor said that nearly $20 million has been spent by his opponents and by outside groups in the form of derogatory television advertisements.
“What you see in this campaign, playing out on your TV screens and playing out in your mailboxes, is a business transaction,” Pryor said.
Sophomore Stryder Matthews, a social science major, said the campaign advertisements have been very interesting to follow this year, although clearly not the best source of information.
“Advertisements have been fun to follow, but for all the wrong reasons,” Matthews said. “What I have ‘learned’ is that Mark Pryor hates the people, loves Obama and does not go to church, the three most damning things an Arkansas Senator can do. Tom Cotton is an overly ambitious young man, lacking in sense, (who) fails to understand Arkansas’ needs.”
In a discussion of student loan rates and the burden of college debt — in which Pryor mocked Cotton for attending Harvard University, saying he “probably couldn’t get into the University of Arkansas” — Pryor said he is determined to make education more affordable and said the interest rate for student loans should be 2.3 percent. In return, Cotton said Pryor and Obama should not determine a universal interest rate for student loans, but rather the student loan program should compete with private options such as those of home-town banks.
Arkansas viewers can expect more advertisements in the weeks to come before the election, based on comments made by both the Republican and the Democratic candidates in the Oct. 14 debate. When pressed to define middle-class Americans, Pryor said the middle-class could be defined as those who make an income of around $150,000 to $200,000 per year. Cotton said that Pryor must be associating only with billionaires if he thinks the average middle-class American makes $200,000. Later in the debate, in a discussion about the Affordable Care Act, Cotton gave no answer as to the fate of those who would find themselves uninsured and without a private option should Obamacare be repealed, which is at the top of Cotton’s agenda should he be elected.
