By STEVE BRAWNER
Sen. Tom Cotton and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders made national news this past week. For Cotton, it was because of a disagreement with President Trump about when Americans should awaken. For Sanders, it was because some commenters said her political ad was too “woke.”
Cotton’s moment occurred Saturday when Trump urged him to support The Sunshine Protection Act in a post on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. The bill would make daylight savings occur year-round. It has already easily passed the House, 308-117, although all four members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation voted against it.
Trump encouraged Arkansans to contact Cotton and tell him to support the bill, going so far as to list what he said was Cotton’s cell phone number.
Cotton responded by saying that, like everyone else, he doesn’t like changing the clock, but past efforts to enact permanent daylight savings time have been repealed because the sun rises too late in the winter. There was a short-lived and ultimately unpopular move to year-round daylight savings time in the 1970s during an energy crisis.
“Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first,” he wrote on the X platform.
Trump was more personal in his response than he was in his first post, writing, “If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight.” He said Cotton has held up the bill for months.
A little perspective: I drive a school bus, and it’s dark now when I start picking up my students. It’s lighter by the time I finish my route, but the darkness lasts longer every day this time of year. I look forward to switching to standard time Nov. 1 and wish we would keep it there year-round.
It was interesting that this was an issue that put some daylight between Trump and Cotton. Like other congressional Republicans, the senator has largely supported the president. If he’s disagreed, he hasn’t said so very often.
There have been a couple of notable exceptions. Earlier this year, Cotton, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Trump disagreed about the process for nominating Trump’s director of national intelligence. Cotton wanted to advance the nomination while Trump wanted to pause to force Congress to vote on other legislation first. There was a pause, and then the nomination ultimately proceeded. More importantly, Cotton publicly broke with Trump by announcing he was voting to certify Joe Biden’s election as president after the 2020 election. The book “In Trump’s Shadow” reported that Cotton’s decision helped stall momentum among Republican senators who wanted to object to the certification.
This latest dustup comes amidst Cotton’s re-election campaign against Democratic nominee Hallie Shoffner, with Libertarian Jeff Wadlin also on the ballot. The disagreement allows Cotton to assert some independence, which I doubt was Trump’s intent.
All signs point to this being a good year for Democrats in the midterm elections, when the party not in the White House tends to do better. It’s hard to imagine Cotton losing in Arkansas, where Democrats for years have struggled to hit 40% in statewide races. But this one could be closer than those recent elections. Newsweek recently reported that Cotton and his allies were spending $13.6 million on advertising this election cycle. They wouldn’t do so if they didn’t believe he needed to shore up support.
Trump’s posting of Cotton’s phone number wasn’t the only national political news coming from Arkansas last week. Gov. Sanders drew attention with her political ad touting the state’s coming work requirements for Medicaid recipients. The ad features “Brad,” a lazy, cheeseball eating, video game playing … white guy on public assistance.
The decision to feature Brad set off protests among some conservative online commenters who argued that the ad is “anti-white.” People like to get mad these days, or at least pretend that they are.
There was enough of a backlash that it led the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s news coverage one day. The Atlantic, a left-leaning national news outlet, noted the ironic current state of politics, saying that some Make America Great Again activists are saying Sanders “is too woke now.”
To sum it up: There was a dispute over waking up, and a dispute over being too woke. Politics.
Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 24 news outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.