Tom Cotton

Tom Cotton (born May 13, 1977) is from the city of Dardanelle, Arkansas. He served five years in the U.S. Army as an infantry officer and is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Cotton is a Republican candidate for Congress in the Fourth Congressional District of Arkansas.
Early life, education and military career
Cotton was born and raised outside Dardanelle, AR which is part of Yell County, which was made famous by the novel and movie True Grit. He grew up on his family's cattle farm and graduated from Dardanelle High School. Cotton then attended Harvard College, where he played on the junior-varsity basketball team, wrote as a columnist for the Harvard Crimson, and was a member of the Harvard Republican Club. Cotton continued his education at Harvard Law School.
After completing law school, he served as a federal judicial clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith. Cotton subsequently entered private practice, where his work focused on labor, employment, and constitutional law in cases at all levels of state and federal court.
Cotton enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2004 as a infantryman. After completing his initial-entry training at Fort Benning, he was deployed in 2006 to Baghdad as a platoon leader of a 41-man air-assault infantry platoon with the 101st Airborne. In Iraq, Cotton led daily combat patrols in Al Dora, Abu Dashir, and the surrounding rural sectors outside Baghdad.
After returning from Iraq, Cotton served as a platoon leader with The Old Guard at the Arlington National Cemetery At The Old Guard, Cotton conducted military honors funerals for Army veterans, military ceremonies, and the dignified-transfer-of-remains ceremony for fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base.
In 2008, Cotton volunteered to serve on a joint-service Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan. He served as the PRT operations officer in Laghman Province, planning and conducting daily counterinsurgency operations.
Cotton was honorably discharged after nearly five years of active-duty service. During his service, he earned the Bronze Star Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Ranger Tab, the Parachutist Badge, and the Air Assault Badge.
Post-military career
After his discharge from active duty, Cotton joined McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm. At McKinsey, Cotton worked as a management consultant advising companies on business strategy, operations, finance, and marketing. He served clients across many industries, including agribusiness, health care, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, insurance, and aerospace.
Political candidacy
Cotton is a Republican candidate for Congress in the Fourth District of Arkansas in the 2012 election. Congressman Mike Ross currently holds this seat and has announced he will retire after his current term expires. This district voted for John McCain with 58% of the vote in 2008; McCain carried the new district lines with 63% of the vote.
In August 2011, Cotton reached achieved “On the Radar” status in the Young Guns program, a candidate-recruitment program started by Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy at the National Republican Congressional Committee. Cotton earned this distinction in his first two weeks as a candidate and was among the first twenty “On the Radar” candidates nationwide.

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