Arkansas

When open enrollment in Obamacare starts next month, enrollees in four states will be able to choose plans from only one insurer.

The governor of Arkansas joined the governor of Alabama and others in saying that Syrian refugees can't come to his state. Governor Asa Hutchinson made the announcement this morning on Twitter.

For Republican presidential candidates planning to run against Hillary Clinton, the critique of her record these days often begins and ends with Benghazi and her email server. This is partly because these are so damning but partly because there’s a near-universal assumption that Clinton has no…

Former Clinton advisor Paul Begala told CNN's Chris Cuomo Tuesday morning that Hillary Clinton "absolutely" has to answer for standing by her husband when he served as governor of Arkansas and defended that state's flag's relationship to the Confederate battle flag.

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a 2008 Republican candidate for president, announced Tuesday he is running for the GOP nomination again in 2016. At an event in his hometown of Hope, Arkansas, Huckabee hit on populist and social conservative themes, repeatedly entreating voters to…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer John McCormack and the amendment to the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee met with about 40 conservative scholars in California Thursday in preparation for a potential presidential run in 2016. The discussion and Q&A session occurred at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and included in attendance George Shultz, Ronald…

Republican Tom Cotton has beaten incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor in Arkansas's U.S. Senate race, Fox News projects.

Chuck Todd of NBC News is traveling the country, talking to voters, and generally filing interesting reports. But in his report on Arkansas, he repeats a familiar, and false, trope:

Tom Cotton, the Republican candidate for Senate from Arkansas, is calling on President Obama to renounce the "vulgar" attack on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu which was expressed by an anonymous administration official in a recent Atlantic article.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette endorses Tom Cotton for U.S. Senate:

Entering the final fortnight of the Senate races, something of a pattern has started to develop. Republicans are leading in the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling in all states that were to the right of the national average in the 2012 election (which President Obama won by 4 points),…

Senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas facing a tough reelection, can't give a straight answer when asked about President Obama's response to Ebola:

All four members of Arkansas's delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives have signed a letter to President Obama urging the federal government to restrict travel into the country from African nations affected by the Ebola virus outbreak.

One of the most interesting aspects of the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli was an ad sponsored by the Conservative War Chest tagging McAuliffe as part of the “Gang of Five.” According to the ad, this group -- Democratic party leaders,…

The headline on a Cameron Joseph piece in The Hill reads

Democratic senator Mark Pryor did not own a home in Arkansas, the state he represents in Washington, during his first four years in the U.S. Senate. And now it appears he lives part-time at the Washington, D.C. home of his brother, a top lobbyist for Microsoft.

Little Rock

Congressman Tom Cotton, the Republican running for Senate in Arkansas, blasts his Democratic opponent, Mark Pryor, for refusing to debate foreign policy issue.

Conway, Ark.

Republican congressman Tom Cotton holds a small, two-point lead in a new CNN poll of his race against sitting Democratic senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas. The poll of likely voters found 49 percent support Cotton and 47 percent support Pryor. Here's more from CNN:

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Arkansas's largest newspaper, has an editorial criticizing Democratic senator Mark Pryor and praising his Republican challenger, congressman Tom Cotton. Here's an excerpt:

For the most part, Republican candidates for Congress have been quiet about the immigration crisis on the border, with a few exceptions. But Rep. Tom Cotton, the GOP Senate candidate in Arkansas, has put his Democratic opponent's support for amnesty for illegal immigrants at the center of his new…

Republicans have distinct advantages in Senate races this year, including President Obama’s low job ratings, the number of vulnerable Democrats, and an unhappy national mood. But there’s another advantage: the generally high quality of their candidates. This wasn’t the case in 2010 and 2012, when…

Conservative super PAC American Crossroads has a new ad running in Arkansas calling Democratic senator Mark Pryor a "rubber stamp" for Barack Obama.

Earlier this year, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton—now locked in a toss-up Senate race with Democrat Mark Pryor—voted against the farm bill. According to politicos and pundits in Washington, D.C., this is a politically dangerous vote to have cast. This recent article from Politico mentions his farm…

Congressman Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and U.S. Senate candidate, told Neil Cavuto of Fox News Wednesday afternoon that the decision to exchange five Taliban operatives from Guantanamo Bay for the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has put the remaining American troops in Afghanistan in…

Senator Mark Pryor is making entitlements an issue in the Arkansas Senate race. Both Pryor and his Democratic allies are hitting Republican nominee and House member Tom Cotton over his support for a budget proposal that would have, starting in 2022, gradually raised the retirement age for receiving…

Mark Pryor, the Democratic senator from Arkansas facing reelection this year, hasn't answered questions about whether he thinks Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki should resign amid stories of malfeasance at VA hospitals. While many of his colleagues up for reelection have answered questions…

Republican Senate candidate Tom Cotton holds a small lead over Democratic senator Mark Pryor in an internal poll released today by the Cotton campaign. The poll of 600 likely voters in Arkansas found 42 percent support Cotton and 40 percent support Pryor. See the full release here.

A new poll of registered voters in Arkansas shows Democratic sentaor Mark Pryor leading his Republican challenger, Tom Cotton, by 11 points. Pryor receives 51 percent support, while Cotton has 40 percent, according to an NBC News/Marist poll released Monday. This is the largest lead for Pryor since…

A new poll from PPP found Arkansas senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat, effectively tied with his Republican challenger Tom Cotton. Forty-three percent say they support Pryor, while 42 percent say they support Cotton.

The Arkansas Senate race has been close in virtually every serious poll. The Republican challenger, Tom Cotton, probably had a small lead a month or so ago; after a massive negative assault on him by Harry Reid's Super PAC, the Democratic incumbent, Mark Pryor, is probably now ahead by a point or…

Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor has a 10-point lead in his race to retain his Senate seat, according to a new poll from the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation. A two-term senator, Pryor has 46 percent support, while his challenger, Republican congressman Tom Cotton, has 36 percent…

Last month, Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor told NBC News that he believed his Republican opponent, congressman Tom Cotton, has a "sense of entitlement" with regard to Pryor's Senate seat. Cotton is a first-term congressman and Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, while Pryor is a two-term…

A new 30-second TV ad from Republican Senate candidate Tom Cotton hits back at an attack from the Harry Reid-affiliated Senate Majority PAC. The original ad claimed the Arkansas congressman "got paid handsomely working for insurance companies," but the Cotton ad notes that the Washington Post said…

What do Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia have in common? For one, none has a city larger than 400,000 people. For another, they all voted for John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. For yet another, they are the most likely places for Republicans to pick up…

A new poll from Talk Business found Mark Pryor, the sitting Democratic senator from Arkansas, with a three-point lead over Republican challenger Tom Cotton. The survey of more than 1,000 likely voters found 45.5 percent said they would vote for Pryor, while 42.5 percent said they would vote for…

Arkansas senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat up for reelection this year, told local station KARK-TV he would have still voted for Obamacare despite all the law's problems.

Republican Senate candidate Tom Cotton has a four-point lead over incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor in a new poll of the Arkansas race. According to the new Impact Management Group poll, 46 percent of likely Arkansas voters said they would support Cotton, the first-term congressman from Dardanelle, and…

To appreciate the Senate race shaping up in Arkansas between two-term incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor and freshman Republican House member Tom Cotton, it’s useful to review the state’s particular variant of Southern politics.

Republican congressman Tom Cotton, a candidate for U.S. Senate, raised more money in the last quarter of 2013 than his Democratic opponent, incumbent Mark Pryor. The Hill reports that Cotton, a first-term House member, raised $1.2 million dollars at the end of last year, compared to Pryor's $1.1…

Mark Pryor, the incumbent Democratic senator from Arkansas up for reelection next year, is releasing a new TV ad Wednesday in which he invokes his belief in God. The ad first aired on the news broadcast on ABC affiliate KATV in Little Rock Tuesday evening.

An Obamacare event in Arkansas offered a prize for those who attended: Free condoms.

Senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat from North Carolina who is up for reelection in 2014, says she supports delaying the deadline for signing up for health insurance under Obamacare's individual mandate. Hagan, who voted for Obamacare back in 2010, also says the fine for not signing up for health…

Just 33 percent of Arkansas voters approve of the job of Democratic senator Mark Pryor, according to a new poll of likely voters from the University of Arkansas. That's Pryor's lowest rating in the annual poll since entering the Senate in 2003, while an all-time high of 41 percent disapprove of his…

On Tuesday evening, the reelection campaign for Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor emailed supporters about a recent "secret meeting" between Republican senator Ted Cruz and a group of House Republicans at a restaurant on Capitol Hill, Tortilla Coast. Pryor campaign manager Jeff Weaver suggested that the…

New polls of likely voters in three key states in next year's U.S. Senate election show Republicans running just behind incumbent Democrats. Harper Polling, a firm associated with Republicans and working on behalf of conservative super PAC American Crossroads, conducted surveys of likely voters in…

With just a little more than a year before the 2014 general election, Democratic senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas has a slim lead over his likely Republican opponent, first-term congressman Tom Cotton. According to a new poll from Talk Business and Hendrix College, the incumbent Pryor has 42 percent…

Tom Cotton, the freshman Republican congressman from Arkansas, announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate earlier this week in his hometown of Dardanelle. Watch Cotton's first ad, which includes excerpts of his announcement, below:

Mark Pryor, the Arkansas Democrat running for reelection to the Senate next year, said job losses as a result of the downturn in the economy are "just part of being in a capitalist economy." Watch the video of Pryor's recent remarks to the Arkansas state chamber of commerce and the Associated…

Declaring his candidacy for the U.S. Senate Tuesday evening, Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas took on the charge that he isn't experienced enough and went for the jugular.

Mark Pryor, the two-term Democratic senator up for reelection next year, says Obamacare has "been an amazing success story" in his state of Arkansas.

Tom Cotton, the freshman Republican congressman from Arkansas, has a small lead over incumbent Democratic senator Mark Pryor in a new poll from Conservative Intelligence Briefing. Of the 587 likely voters polled, 43 percent said they would vote for Cotton, who is expected to enter the race soon,…

Arkansas senator Mark Pryor blasts the president in new comments made to the Associated Press. "[I]f you look at the president's policies, he just doesn't offer a lot to states like Arkansas," Pryor, a Democrat, told the wire service. "He doesn't offer a lot to rural America. I've encouraged the…

The AP reports:

Tom Cotton, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Democratic senator Mark Pryor was asked on a local television show whether he stands by his vote in favor of Obamacare:

The Republican party in Arkansas has released this good video showing Sen. Mark Pryor's inconsistent gun record:

Freshman Republican congressman Tom Cotton may have only served in Congress for a few months, but conservative groups are already considering him for a 2014 Senate run in his native Arkansas against vulnerable Democrat Mark Pryor. The Washington Post reports on a new poll showing Cotton, an Army…

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is indicating that freshman Republican congressman Tom Cotton of Arkansas is on the group's radar. From Politico's Alexander Burns:

Freshman Republican congressman Tom Cotton had this to say to Hillary Clinton at a hearing today on the Benghazi terror attack: "I just wish you had won the Democratic primary in 2008."

Arkansas Republican House candidate Tom Cotton has released a new ad, highlighting the political lessons Cotton learned serving in the U.S. Army.

The Arkansas Democratic party is denying presidential candidate John Wolfe the delegates he earned in the state's primary because Wolfe's selected delegates fail to meet the party's standards for diversity. Wolfe is suing the party to seat his delegates after he won over 40 percent of the vote…

Arkansas Democrat Gene Jeffress, who is running for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District, offered a strange story about health care reform at a recent campaign stop. The video, picked up by Caleb Howe at RedState, contains some offensive language from Jeffress, who suggests that Republican…

Less than a month after his primary victory in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, Republican candidate Tom Cotton gets a laudatory profile in Roll Call:

Hours after Tom Cotton won the GOP nomination for the open seat in Arkansas' Fourth Congressional District, and became a strong favorite to win the general election in a district that went 58 percent to 39 percent for John McCain in 2008, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a…

War veteran Tom Cotton has won the Republican primary for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District, the Associated Press projects. With 63 percent of precincts reporting, Cotton leads with 56 percent, while his primary opponent, Beth Anne Rankin, trails with 38 percent. 

Barack Obama has defeated John Wolfe Jr. in the Democratic primary in Arkansas. With 81 percent of precincts reporting, Obama, the president of the United States, has 59.5 percent of the vote while Wolfe, a lawyer from Tennessee, has 40.5 percent.

If Barack Obama experiences an upset in Arkansas’s Democratic primary today, it won’t be for lack of trying. The Obama campaign and the Democratic party have spent significant resources in Arkansas, while an unknown primary challenger has threatened the president's ability to win the support of the…

“We’ve had some small contributions, but the largest was, I think, maybe a hundred dollars,” says presidential candidate John Wolfe Jr., speaking to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “I’m basically paying for this myself, dipping into my retirement account.”

My goodness. This story is just plain nuts:

The Arkansas Democratic party may decide not to award delegates to an opponent of Barack Obama in the state's primary next Tuesday, according to reports. The opponent, John Wolfe, Jr., says if he's denied rightfully won delegates, the party would be effectively disenfranchising those who chose him…

After a poll released this week showed President Barack Obama only beating his Democratic primary opponent John Wolfe Jr. by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent, in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, state Democrats moved to practically disenfranchise Arkansas voters. "[D]elegates Wolfe…

Republican Tom Cotton, a candidate for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District, has received the endorsement of the state's largest newspaper. From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

A new poll of Arkansas Democrats shows Barack Obama receiving support from only 45 percent of Democratic primary voters in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District, while 38 percent support his underfunded and relatively unknown primary challenger, Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe, Jr. Seventeen percent…

Republican House candidate Tom Cotton has signed a pledge to repeal Obamacare--but his primary opponent, Beth Anne Rankin, has not.

A new poll released Sunday shows Tom Cotton opening up a large lead over Beth Anne Rankin in the Republican primary race for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth District. The Talk Business-Hendrix College poll shows Cotton, an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, with 51 percent support, 18 points ahead…

Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas looks to be the likely (and deserving) winner in his race for the Republican nomination in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District. Having led the GOP field in fundraising, Cotton, an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, landed a big endorsement today that should…

John Wolfe Jr., Barack Obama’s Democratic challenger in the upcoming Arkansas and Texas primaries, said he is for civil unions for gay couples but refused to support gay marriage.

In the wake of Keith Judd's inspiring showing in the West Virginia Democratic primary, one wonders if there's another state where Democrats could be encouraged to exercise their sovereign right of choice to refuse to rubber stamp the renomination by their party of President Obama.

Tom Cotton, a Republican candidate for House of Representatives in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, is debuting a new ad that's running on television across the district. The ad will also run in Shreveport, Louisiana television markets, which reach several southern Arkansas counties. Watch…

Arizona senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran and the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, has endorsed Tom Cotton for Congress. Cotton, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is running for the Republican nomination for Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District against the 2010 GOP nominee, Beth Anne…

Republican Tom Cotton, running to represent Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, has a new ad out with residents of his native city Dardanelle introducing Cotton to voters. Watch the ad below:

It's been a good week for Republican House candidate Tom Cotton. Cotton, a former Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, announced earlier this week that he had raised $350,000 for the first quarter, far outraising his Republican opponents running in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional…

Tom Cotton, a Republican candidate for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, raised over $350,000 in the first quarter of fundraising, his campaign announced today. Cotton, who is running for the seat held by retiring Democrat Mike Ross, squares off with fellow Republican candidates…

Tom Cotton, a Republican candidate for Congress in Arkansas, has two new television ads running in the state's Fourth Congressional District. The ads highlight Cotton's service in Iraq as an Army Ranger and focus on his pledge to fight for a balanced budget and overturn Obamacare. Watch the ads…

More good news for Republican Tom Cotton in his race for the open 4th Congressional District seat in Arkansas. 

Army veteran Tom Cotton has raised $343,000 in his first quarter of fundraising, according to the Associated Press. Cotton, a Republican candidate for Congress in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, more than doubled the haul of his closest rival for the GOP nomination, former Miss Arkansas…