The candidates for Arkansas' U.S. Senate seat hit the campaign trail hard Thursday.
Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton appeared at two forums on energy policy, starting at an event sponsored by Real Clear Politics at the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock before heading to a Fayetteville forum to talk about electric rates in Northwest Arkansas.
Incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor was invited to the Little Rock forum Thursday but had a previously scheduled engagement. His staff made time earlier in the day to round up farmers -- including Dow Brantley, chairman of the USA Rice Federation -- to pan an ad put out by Cotton defending his vote against the farm bill earlier this year.
At the energy forum Thursday, moderators made it clear that Cotton and Pryor agree on several key energy policies in Arkansas -- they both want the Keystone XL Pipeline project to move forward, and they both disagree with the federal Environmental Protection Agency carbon emission regulations that would force coal-powered energy plants to reduce their emissions by 30 percent, among other changes.
Cotton said the difference between the two candidates on energy policy is his determination to clear the logjam of bills waiting in the Senate that have been passed by the House.
"Mark Pryor sometimes talks a good game on energy, like he said he supports the Keystone Pipeline," Cotton said. "Why has it not come up for a vote in the Senate? Why did he vote for the confirmation of Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson to the EPA, who's proposed the very carbon rules that would drive up the cost of electricity for every Arkansan? Why has he not brought legislation to the Senate floor that would help expedite the leasing and the permitting of exploration and production of oil and gas on federal lands and in federal waters?"
Erik Dorey, a deputy campaign manager for Pryor, said Cotton's claim to be a conqueror of gridlock is false.
"From Day One, Congressman Cotton has been part of the problem in Washington with his my way or the highway politics and partisan gridlock games to the point where he explicitly said he was willing to shut down the government, and then he did," Dorey said.
Pryor's campaign Thursday also gathered three Arkansas farmers who called a recent ad from Cotton defending his vote against the farm bill misleading. The ad attacks the Obama administration for "hijacking the farm bill" and turning it into a food stamp bill.
Brantley said he was disappointed in Cotton's vote.
"I was shocked that he would oppose it, especially because one in six jobs in this state is from agriculture," he said.
Jeffrey Hall, a Grant County cattle farmer, said Cotton should "pull his ad down." But Cotton defended the ad after the energy summit Thursday and said it would continue to run.
"Here are the facts: the farm bill should be called the Food Stamp Bill. It's 80 percent food stamps, a trillion dollars in new spending, and it's a program that's almost doubled under Obama's administration."
Dorey said the vote and the ad are telling signs about Cotton's candidacy.
"When Congressman Cotton puts his out-of-state billionaire campaign contributors ahead of Arkansas' farmers, ranchers and rural families, it says something about his priorities and quite frankly about his character," he said.
Metro on 09/26/2014