4 in Senate race fight to be heard above din

In a race that has blanketed the state with millions of dollars in television, radio and Internet advertising, the two front-runners in the four-man contest for U.S. Senate are waging the most expensive campaign in Arkansas history.

Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor is seeking a third term, selling himself as one of the nation's most independent senators and distancing himself from fellow Democrat President Barack Obama. Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton is serving his first term in Congress and has weathered criticism from his opponents for millions of dollars spent on his behalf by what they call his "billionaire investors."

The race is one of the most heated Senate contests across the country, targeted early by Republicans seeking to win a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Libertarian Nathan LaFrance and Green Party candidate Mark Swaney are also on the ballot. They are running no political ads, and they're struggling to be heard over the din of close to $34 million in advertising being spent by outside groups and the Cotton and Pryor campaigns.

And the spending isn't over -- the election is still a half-month away.

The Associated Press released an analysis of advertising late last month that showed that more than 38,000 individual media commercials had aired in the Senate race since early 2013.

In addition to the advertising blitz, Pryor appealed to his supporters, organizing coalitions such as "Women for Pryor" to make direct contact with potential voters. He has also enlisted his well-known parents -- former governor and ex-U.S. Sen. David Pryor and former Arkansas first lady Barbara Pryor -- to woo voters.

Democrats -- interested in this and other races in the state -- have opened close to 40 field offices, recruited hundreds of volunteers and worked with other groups to register thousands of new voters in traditionally Democratic areas.

"Probably my favorite part of the job is traveling the state and seeing people and seeing what's going on," Pryor said, sitting in his campaign headquarters in downtown Little Rock during an interview that was sandwiched between press events and phone calls.

"We have a lot of unfinished business in Washington, and I believe very strongly in our country and that we need senators in Arkansas who listen and who work in a bipartisan way ... that's been really what's been missing up there, working together."

Cotton, who didn't grow up in a political family, has been criticized for his campaign style.

An article in U.S. News & World Report said Cotton "lacks warmth" when he speaks and his "wooden delivery is more often academic, lacking an everyday, common touch that's still essential in a place with slightly less than 3 million people."

Since then, he has stepped up his ground game. The newlywed spent much of the past two months traveling the state in a camouflage-speckled recreational vehicle, often accompanied by his parents, Avis and Len Cotton, and his wife, Anna, who announced earlier this month that she's pregnant with a baby boy.

Cotton has also appeared more relaxed on the campaign trail recently, grinning and laughing beside former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee during a recent joint appearance.

Republicans have ramped up their coordinated campaign to promote their ticket. They've set up phone banks and door-knocking parties, opened offices in new areas and added field coordinators -- including a person in charge of attracting minority-member volunteers to the GOP.

He shares a campaign office on Cantrell Road in Little Rock with the Republican National Committee's statewide operations center. There recently, Cotton stared out the third-floor conference-room window between questions, hands folded in his lap, legs loosely crossed.

"I'm running because I want to create a better future for Arkansas and for America, better than what we've seen in the last six years," he said. "Under the Obama/Pryor economy, we've added 88,000 people to food stamps and only 28,000 new, full-time jobs. Obamacare is driving up the cost of health insurance ... and our military is being gutted at a time when the world is far more dangerous."

Cotton, a Harvard graduate who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, has the discipline to stay on message. During two recent debates, social media accounts buzzed with loose counts of the number of times he said "Obama" as he attempted to align his opponent with a president who has never come close to winning in Arkansas.

"Pryor has been rubber-stamping the president's agenda for 93 percent of the time over the last six years," Cotton said. "I don't know many people in Arkansas who agree with the president that much, and I don't think we need one representing us in the Senate."

Pryor has also stayed on message, ramping up over the past month his references to the "billionaire backers" who have contributed to Cotton and financed commercials and attack ads on Cotton's behalf.

During the one head-to-head debate between Cotton and Pryor in Fayetteville last week, Democrats rented a limousine and parked it next to a cabana tent with the word "billionaires" written across the side. They handed out fake billion-dollar bills with Cotton's grimacing visage stamped on one side.

On Friday, Pryor mentioned those investors again, but also said that voters know where his loyalties are. They know that he has "Arkansas written on my heart."

"I think Arkansas voters are smarter than what the Cotton campaign gives them credit for being. Our voters here are stubbornly independent. They go into the voting booth and make up their mind on who they think they can trust," he said.

"The reason [the mega donors] invest in him, is they know they're going to get a return on their investment. ... And in order for them to get the return, that means he has to do a lot of things that are against the best interest of Arkansas ... like vote against the Farm Bill."

Cotton isn't the only one with deep-pocketed friends in distant cities. Pryor has raised millions from out-of-state interests.

Both candidates said they're hearing first and foremost about the economy as they travel the state and talk to voters. But their visions for how to address those economic issues differ greatly.

For Cotton, the focus is repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, cutting deficit spending and changing the tax codes, "to put more money back in people's pockets."

Pryor said eliminating the Affordable Care Act will take away some of the good programs that have come from the federal health law, including allowing children to stay on parents' insurance plans until they're 26, increasing prescription drug coverage for senior citizens and making it illegal to deny insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

Both candidates support building the Keystone XL Pipeline. Neither likes the carbon-emission rules passed down by the Environmental Protection Agency that have been projected to drive up the cost of energy and the ability to attract manufacturing plants to Arkansas.

Pryor has put forward an economic package called "American-made strong" that would limit tax breaks for companies that take jobs overseas while offering more tax incentives to companies that move to the U.S. It also requires government projects to use American-made products and creates a voluntary labeling program for products that are made or assembled in the U.S.

Cotton's campaign has called the plan, announced a few months ago, an election-year ploy, saying there was little time left in the congressional session and little momentum to get the legislation to a vote by the time the plan was announced.

LaFrance, the Libertarian candidate, said he feels a calling to run because of concerns for the economy, as well.

"I thought about it for a long time, and I realized that this was the right race that really needed a strong third-party option for voters," he said. "I'm worried about my children. I have three daughters and three stepdaughters, and I see a country in disarray and candidates not addressing those big issues."

LaFrance said his first priority will be passing a balanced budget amendment that will eliminate deficit spending. He said he also hopes to overhaul the tax laws and institute a fair tax -- a national sales tax that would replace income tax collections.

"The party that claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility is not anymore, and when I realized that, I became disillusioned with the Republican Party," he said.

For Green Party candidate Swaney, he said he felt the need to enter the race because he wasn't hearing anyone representing his interests. He complained that there was no progressive voice on the ballot.

"Mark Pryor is not a progressive. Please put that in capital letters. ... The Democratic Party in Arkansas is not a progressive political party. It never has been. It's simply the last of a dying breed," he said.

But the Green Party candidate said he wasn't crazy about Cotton, either. "I don't think there's anything Tom Cotton thinks that we agree with," he said, calling the Republican "a giant embarrassment."

Swaney supports a minimum wage that's higher than the proposed federal increase. He also supports same-sex marriage and eliminating the death penalty.

SundayMonday on 10/19/2014