From left: Republican Micah Ashby, Republican Jeb Little, Democrat Hallie Shoffner and Democrat Ethan Dunbar are seeking to challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton in Arkansas’ 2026 primary elections. | Photos courtesy of Arkansas Secretary of State
By TESS VRBIN | Arkansas Advocate
Four Arkansans on the ballot Tuesday want to replace U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton this year, and the two Republicans and two Democrats all said they believe the two-term senator has not been representing Arkansas.
Hallie Shoffner of Little Rock and Lewisville Mayor Ethan Dunbar will face each other in the Democratic primary March 3. Jeb Little of Harrison and Micah Ashby of Bradford are challenging Cotton in the GOP primary. Dunbar is the only one of the four to have run for elected office before.
The four are focusing their attention more on Cotton than each other in interviews and campaign materials, and with good reason. Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, is one of the most nationally known GOP figures from Arkansas, with regular appearances on Fox News and Sunday talk shows. Closely aligned with President Donald Trump on issues like immigration, he also is widely viewed as a potential presidential hopeful in 2028.
Cotton has reported having more than $9.6 million in the bank for his reelection, a staggering amount compared to his four rivals.
Cotton did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. His opponents said he doesn’t listen to regular Arkansans or spend enough time in the state to know what their needs are.
Shoffner’s campaign received more than $1 million in contributions between July and December 2025. Her social media presence and her background as a farmer talking about the impact of Trump’s tariffs have garnered national attention.
She acknowledged the challenge she faces in a predominantly Republican state that hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 2010.
“I’m not asking anybody to become a Democrat,” Shoffner said. “I’m just asking that you think we can do a hell of a lot better than what we’re doing right now.”
Shoffner’s motivation to run came from the sale of her family’s farm. Dunbar said being mayor of a small city in south Arkansas made him want to serve the state.
“I feel like I can do a lot of good to help people, especially being a mayor [and] understanding what the needs are here at the lowest level in rural Arkansas,” Dunbar said.
Ashby said she had been considering running for office for some time before choosing to challenge Cotton. She is a pastor and a self-described “constitutional conservative.”
“I believe that the Constitution is the rule of law,” Ashby said. “It should not be looked over. It should not be bypassed.”
She and Little, an Arkansas State Police trooper, both said they feel they are more in touch with the everyday Arkansan than Cotton is.
Little said he decided to run in September 2025 when Cotton was among the 51 U.S. senators to vote against an attempt to release records of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking operations. A call to Cotton’s office asking about the vote yielded no response, Little said.
“I joined this race because that just didn’t sit right with me,” he said.
In November, Cotton expressed support for legislation to order the release of the Epstein files, and the Senate passed the bill unanimously.
Agriculture and China
A sixth-generation farmer, Shoffner sold her family’s 2,000-acre Jackson County soybean farm last year because it had become financially unsustainable.
Shoffner and Dunbar both criticized Cotton for voting against the Farm Bill, the federal agriculture spending and policy package that Congress repeatedly renews. The Farm Bill has not been updated since 2018.
Cotton voted against the legislation in 2014, when he was in the U.S. House, and in 2018. He said both times that the bill allocated too much money to nutrition assistance programs.
Dunbar said he would support policies that bolster the “agricultural safety net” such as subsidies and loans for farmers. Shoffner said she would support policies that reshape Arkansas’ agricultural market and incentivize farmers to produce food that feeds families instead of primarily fuel and animal feed.
Ashby said her primary concern for Arkansas farmers is the monopolies that foreign companies have on seeds, and she would introduce a bill to break those monopolies. Little said he also wants to be a voice for farmers on the federal level and make sure farmers feel heard “not just during campaign season.”
Cotton late last year asked U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to speed up aid to farmers.
Cotton has also focused heavily on China, which the Republican senator calls “our most dangerous enemy.”
“We must end our economic dependence on China, decouple our supply chains, ban American investment in strategic Chinese industries, protect American intellectual property rights, and punish offshoring American jobs to China,” Cotton’s website states.
Affordability and education
Regardless of location or party affiliation, prospective Arkansas voters have expressed frustration about the cumulative costs of groceries, housing and health care, all four candidates said.
Shoffner noted that affordability is not a new problem for Arkansas, which has consistently been among the poorest states.
“We are talking about decades worth of crumbling infrastructure, decades of bad policy that brought us where we are today,” Shoffner said.
Cotton’s campaign website mentions inflation as an issue that matters to him and touts his support of tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. The wide-ranging federal spending law also includes long-term cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs.
Cotton told THV11 in November that he opposed extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that would have prevented many Americans’ insurance premiums from increasing. He said he believed the subsidies had no mechanism of ensuring they served only low-income Americans.
“Its formal title, the Affordable Care Act, belies the reality because it’s not affordable for Arkansas families,” Cotton said.
The U.S. House passed a bill in January to extend the ACA subsidies, but Senate Republican leadership is not expected to take up the bill for a vote.
Dunbar said he comes from a region where many people struggle to make ends meet, including driving “20 to 30 miles for a job that barely pays minimum wage.”
He said he would support legislation to make child care more affordable and accessible, especially since his home of Lafayette County has no child care centers. He called this “a recipe for continued poverty.”
Funding K-12 public education is equally important, Dunbar said. He promised to fight against diverting federal funds to private schools and Trump’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.
Cotton echoes Trump’s rhetoric on education, saying on his website that he opposes “anti-American propaganda” in schools, such as critical race theory. Critical race theory is a complex legal theory taught in higher education rather than K-12 classrooms.
Ashby said she also believes “politics should not be in school,” giving the example of books with “sexualized” topics, including gender identity.
“I believe we should have a neutral education system without politics pushing our children to go one way or the other,” Ashby said.
Little takes a different approach, saying it’s important to “get God back in schools…if we’re truly one nation under God.”
His campaign website says he will “support parents’ rights, defend children, protect religious liberty, and promote policies that reflect Arkansas values — not Washington’s agendas.”