Tom Cotton in 2014 AR Senate debate

On Families & Children: Domestic violence victim funding pushes ideological agenda

Domestic violence has gotten a spate of national attention with the release of video showing former NFL player Ray Rice beating the woman who is now his wife. The issue had been before Congress in 2013 when the federal Violence Against Women Act came up for renewal. Before the House passed a 5-year extension of the law, it rejected a GOP alternative. Cotton voted against both versions.

His campaign website explains that he believes the federal program spends too much money to "fund liberal organizations to carry out an ideological agenda without effective results in reducing violence against women." A Cotton spokesman said the ad was a part of Democrats' effort to claim Cotton was waging a "war on women," and to distract from "Obama-Pryor economic policies."

On Abortion: AdWatch: I believe in God; and only God has all the answers

Cotton said last week that Pryor thinks "faith is something that only happens at 11 o'clock on Sunday mornings" in response to the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision over the health care law's contraception mandate. Pryor demanded an apology, but none was forthcoming, and the controversial comments got plenty of local attention.

Pryor's new ad features local news coverage the kerfuffle, interspliced with the Bible verse, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."

"I'm not ashamed to say that I believe in God, and I believe in His word. The Bible teaches us no one has all the answers, only God does," Pryor says in the ad. "This is who I am and what I believe."

On Principles & Values: Served in military, academia, and as management consultant

The resumes of Sasse (R, NE) and Cotton (D, AR) do not exactly fit the profile of populists. That is especially true for the lines dedicated to the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company, firms that advise corporations on strategy, efficiency and ways to increase profitability.

Most of Cotton's adult life has been in academia and the military, and he has spent a year in Congress. His time at McKinsey was also barely more than a year, during which time his group leader immersed him in the intricacies--and the value--of the Affordable Care Act.

On Principles & Values: Fastest male in Congress; has finished 11 marathons

Unfortunately for Cotton, his other big race--the heated Arkansas Senate campaign against Sen. Mark Pryor--has taken a toll on the congressman's workout regime. "I do have to work harder to get my runs in each morning," Cotton said. Proceeds from the event went to the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, which helps provide guide dogs to wounded veterans.

The congressman took up running as part of his Army training in 2005, and discovered he enjoyed the sport. Cotton has since run 11 marathons. If Cotton beats Pryor and runs the race as a senator in 2015, he has a better chance of breaking a record. The Senate record belongs to former Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who ran the 1981 Capital Challenge in 18:15.

On Corporations: AdWatch: Worked as management consultant, not in insurance

This attack ad attempts to connect the dots: Rep. Tom Cotton made a fortune working for insurance companies, the story goes, and so he would happily do their bidding as Republicans dismantle Medicare. The ad even helpfully provides an image of connected dots.

The problem is that these dots are phony. The core of the ad is that Cotton worked for insurance companies. Cotton worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Co., flitting from one industry to another; [the closest he came to insurance was] an assignment working for the Federal Housing Authority, to improve its service in providing insurance to lenders who finance apartment buildings.

As for Cotton's pay, he earned $85,000 from McKinsey in 2011. We will leave it to readers to decide if that means he was paid "handsomely."

On Health Care: AdWatch: No, Cotton won't end Medicare guarantee

Senate Majority PAC seems stuck in a time warp on this talking point, referring back to an older version of the House Republican plan to transform the health-care system for the elderly by offering beneficiaries help in buying private insurance, known as "premium support." The plan was substantially changed in 2012 to include an option for seniors to keep the traditional fee-for-service Medicare plan if they preferred. So the "guarantee" is now there. (Claiming a federal program has a "guarantee" is also odd because a future Congress can change the terms of any program.)

The Pinocchio Test: The Medicare claims are so stale--and so repeatedly discredited--we can assume that polling indicates that the language is effective in moving voters, despite its falsity. Four Pinocchios

On Social Security: Oppo AdWatch: supports Privatizing social security

"The real Tom Cotton? Just scratch the surface," the ad's narrator says as Cotton's face is shown on a scratch-off lottery ticket. "Cotton made hundreds of thousands of dollars working for corporate interests. In Congress he takes their campaign cash, luxury trips around the country, and then backs their schemes: Privatizing social security, gambling it on Wall Street, pledging to keep tax breaks that ship jobs overseas. The real Tom Cotton? A politician we just can't trust."

Cotton and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) are locked in a hard-fought race in conservative Arkansas. Both sides have been spending heavily on TV ads for months.

On Homeland Security: AdWatch: No sense of entitlement from serving in military

Cotton denied having any "sense of entitlement" from serving in the military, saying, "I certainly didn't learn one chasing after cattle on the farm. And the last thing my drill sergeant taught me was a sense of entitlement." Cotton said he joined the military after the Sept. 11 attacks and is a strong advocate for veterans, praising the intangible skills of vets like leadership to employers.

In attack ads, Pryor has accused Cotton of being too extreme, which Cotton countered with Pryor's support of the healthcare law: "The only that's extreme is casting the decisive vote for ObamaCare five years ago and still standing by it today," he said.

On Health Care: AdWatch: Cotton supports Medicare "premium support" vouchers

• We've previously fact-checked the Pryor campaign on whether or not Cotton voted to turn Medicare into a "voucher system." We rated that Mostly True. Republicans typically prefer the term "premium support" to "voucher system," but the concept is the same.
• Cotton voted for Paul Ryan's budget proposal in 2013. The plan, which didn't become law, called for issuing flat payments to seniors. Seniors would then have the choice to either purchase traditional Medicare coverage or private insurance.
• But instituting a voucher system wouldn't have directly changed coverage for current seniors on Medicare. That's a far cry from the ad's claim that a voucher system would increase costs for "every senior."
• Our ruling: Cotton did vote for a voucher-like system, but we rate the "increases expenses" claim Mostly False.

On Health Care: Federal shut down to force ObamaCare delay by one year

In response, the Cotton campaign released the following statement: "This ad is a total fabrication and is just the latest example of Sen. Pryor telling Arkansans one thing and doing something completely different in Washington. Tom Cotton voted five times to fund the government and end the shutdown. Sen. Pryor voted against four separate compromise measures that could have opened the government sooner. Instead, Sen. Pryor chose once again to side with Pres. Obama and Harry Reid. Among the compromise measures that Pryor opposed, one would simply have delayed the individual mandate in ObamaCare by one year, giving Arkansas families the same grace period the Administration has already given to big businesses.

On Health Care: FactCheck: No special subsidies for congressional staff

"What's good for the goose ought to be good for the gander. But not in Washington. Mark Pryor cast the deciding vote to make you live under ObamaCare. But Pryor votes himself and everyone in Congress special subsidies so they're protected from ObamaCare. Exceptions and special subsidies for Mark Pryor. Higher insurance premiums for you."

The "special subsidy" refers to a provision, pushed by Republicans, that requires members of Congress and their staff to buy health coverage through the ObamaCare marketplaces. Federal worker benefits would take the same money that it would have spent on the government's old health insurance and spend it on whatever lawmakers and their staffs purchased on the ObamaCare marketplaces. In other words, it would do what every other employer does. Continuing that cost-sharing is the "special subsidy" the Cotton ad refers to. The assertion falls wide of the facts, and we rate this claim False.

On War & Peace: Jihadists attack us for who we are

Former NYC Mayor RUDY GIULIANI: You have to go where the evidence takes you. Profiling is perfectly legal and perfectly legitimate if you're following objective evidence. Unfortunately, a significant number of these attacks come about from this distorted Islamic extremist ideology. So you can't ignore it. You've got to go after it.

REP. TOM COTTON: The mayor makes the core point: that jihadists around the world don't attack us for the actions we take, they attack us for who we are. We are freedom's home, and we are freedom's defender. It didn't take Guantanamo Bay, it didn't take drones, to knock down those towers on 9-11. If we grounded every drone, if we close Guantanamo Bay, they'd find another pretext to attack us.

On War & Peace: Iraq War was just and noble

COTTON: The Iraq war wasn't just a noble war. I joined the army after 9/11, after the Iraq war was started. I joined in part because I wanted to go fight on the front lines. After the surge, I felt that we succeeded. And we have a generation of veterans whose accomplishments in Iraq we should celebrate; and now who are going to be leaders all around the country. We're going to make America a better place.

Q: Was it worth it to the lives that were lost there? Was it worth it with the trillions of dollars that we've spent there?

COTTON: I would say it was worth it, but it was also a little bit too soon to tell because there's nothing ever certain in human affairs. But if you look at the accomplishment of our troops in Iraq, they deposed an evil tyrant who was an aggressive international dictator. He had demonstrated the ability and the will to use weapons of mass destruction. Under those conditions, it was a just and noble war.