One week out from Election Day, national Democrats have made a multi-million dollar TV ad buy in an effort to save one of their most endangered incumbents, Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who is trailing in the polls.
The 30-second spot by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, given to TPM first, attacks Republican Tom Cotton for voting to cut Medicare, voting against funding for a children’s hospital and voting against final passage of the Violence Against Women Act.
“When you needed a helping hand, Tom Cotton voted against you, to line the pockets of billionaires and corporations,” a narrator in the ad says, referring to Cotton’s vote for the budget by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which slashes taxes across the board, with larger gains projected to accrue to upper earners.
A woman adds, “A vote for Tom Cotton is a vote against Arkansas women.”
Pryor has struggled in the final stretch. Cotton has led in every nonpartisan poll conducted in Arkansas over the last month. The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight forecasts each give him an 85 percent change of victory. He leads Pryor by 3.3 percentage points in the TPM PollTracker Average.
