LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton defeated two-term Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor on Tuesday in Arkansas, in an expensive and heated race that the GOP viewed as crucial to its efforts to win the Senate.
Cotton, 37, was elected to a six-year term in the Senate after a 15-month campaign in which the two rivals and outside groups had spent more than $56 million and had blanketed Arkansas airwaves with a barrage of television ads.
Pryor, 51, was first elected to the Senate in 2002 and easily won re-election in 2008 without a Republican opponent. Cotton, who served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, was elected to Congress representing south Arkansas in 2012.
Cotton had regularly accused Pryor of being too closely aligned with President Barack Obama, who remains deeply unpopular in Arkansas. Republicans have made major gains in Arkansas, once considered a Democratic stronghold in the South, primarily by focusing on the president.
Pryor, the son of former governor and Sen. David Pryor, had touted himself as the "poster child" for bipartisanship and accused Cotton of being for the type of obstructionism that led to the federal government shutdown last year.
Republicans had identified Pryor as one of their top targets last year, saying he was vulnerable after Democratic U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln lost her re-election bid in 2010 and the GOP won control of the state Legislature in 2012. Conservative groups began airing ads against Pryor in early 2013, months before Cotton launched his bid to unseat the Democratic senator.
"By electing Tom Cotton, Arkansans have made their voices heard that they will no longer stand idly by and allow a Senator from this great state to choose Barack Obama and his liberal policies over Arkansas," state GOP Chairman Doyle Webb said in a statement Tuesday night.
Danny Scott, who cast his ballot at Grace Church in Bryant, said he voted for Cotton. The 51-year-old Scott believed the Republican came across as more "down-to-earth" in his television ads. Scott said that he had voted for Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections but that he was "disgruntled" with Washington.
"It's all about some change and trying something different," he said.
Pryor ran his first television ads over the summer in 2013, as he faced criticism from gun control groups over his opposition to legislation expanding background checks for firearms purchases.
"No one from New York or Washington tells me what to do. I listen to Arkansas," Pryor said in the spot, which was in response to ads aired by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's gun control campaign.
Months later, Cotton launched his bid against the two-term lawmaker.
"Let's elect a United States senator who when he says Arkansas comes first, actually means it," Cotton told supporters, taking a direct jab at the campaign slogan Pryor and his father had long used.
Pryor had sought early on to portray Cotton as out of touch with the state on issues ranging from the farm bill to student loans. He'd also tried to paint his GOP rival as focusing too much on the president and not on the state.
"He's running against one man," he told supporters Monday night. "I'm running for 3 million Arkansans."
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