A third Arkansan, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, is being called on to enter the 2016 race for the White House. A state legislator launched a website on Monday encouraging people to “Draft Captain Cotton.” If the senator entered the race he’d join the state’s former Governor Mike Huckabee and former First Lady Hillary Clinton in seeking the presidency.
Republican State Representative Charlie Collins of Fayetteville said Cotton knows he’s urging him to run for president but wasn’t a part of the site launch.
“I talked to Senator Cotton several weeks ago and he knew that I was encouraging him to run for president. But he basically demurred and told me he was focused on being a United States senator. He did not know, certainly from me, that I was doing this,” said Collins.
The editor of the Weekly Standard Bill Kristol has also floated Cotton’s name for higher office. State Rep. Collins hopes the chorus will grow for another entrant into the crowded GOP field.
“When a person is called to overcome and serve in a bigger way, I think some people get excited about the potential of doing that,” said Collins. “As we have this discussion and as other people along with me continue to reach out to Tom and get him thinking about it my hope is that he’s going to see this as more and more a possibility.”
Collins said he doesn’t want a call for Cotton to be interpreted as a slight against what he calls an “excellent” Republican field, Huckabee included.
“No one is emerging as the prohibitive favorite or as the answer, or the one candidate that everyone on the GOP side thinks is the answer. Since we’re still searching for that ideal, that best candidate, let’s make sure in my view that we’ve got the best potential candidate in the field,” said Collins.
Cotton is in his first-term as a U.S. senator, he previously served one-term in the US House of Representatives. He has not publicly expressed interest in running for president. Earlier in the year the Arkansas Legislature voted to allow candidates to seek both seats in the US Senate and US House at the same time as a bid for president, beginning in 2020.
