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GOP ticket leads in Arkansas PPP's newest Arkansas poll finds Republicans leading across the board in the state's key races for this year, led by Tom Cotton with a 43/38 advantage over Mark Pryor and Asa Hutchinson with a 44/38 lead over Mike Ross at the top of the ticket. Cotton's lead is up slightly from 41/39 on our previous poll. Voters aren't in love with him- 40% see him favorably to 41% with an unfavorable opinion. But Pryor continues to have tough approval ratings, with 36% giving him good marks to 51% who disapprove. Both candidates are receiving 77%...

Jay Gadberry has always voted for Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, despite his own moderately conservative leanings. After all, the two attended college together. Pryor even flew back to Arkansas when Gadberry’s oldest daughter was killed in a car accident a few years ago. “There’s no better guy than Mark Pryor,” said Gadberry, the president of a wealth management company in Little Rock. Yet this year Gadberry plans to vote for Pryor’s Republican opponent, freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, because he’s fed up with the federal government, including its new health care law, which he says is “decimating” the economy. Frustrated...

There has always been something slightly peculiar about the Republican Party’s designation as the favorite to win the Senate this November. Among the competitive races, it hasn’t had a clear lead in the six states where it needs to win, and it has enjoyed a significant advantage in only three Democratic-held states: in South Dakota, Montana and West Virginia. The Republicans’ advantage has been more about the large number of opportunities across a range of red states, rather than any actual breakthroughs there in which Republicans have taken a big lead. Arkansas could be the first state where the G.O.P....

Late last year, vulnerable Democratic candidates worried that deep problems with the health care law could sink their chances of keeping a majority in the Senate. Now, suddenly, one red-state Democrat is praising the law in a new television ad — an indicator that public opinion of health care reform might have turned a corner. In the ad, Sen. Mark Pryor and his father, former Sen. David Pryor, recount Mark Pryor's own bout with cancer and his struggle finding health insurance that would cover it. "Mark's insurance company didn't want to pay for the treatment that ultimately saved his life," David Pryor says in the ad. "No one should be fighting...

When a far left Democrat such as Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor uses his campaign advertising to offer quotes from John McCain to distinguish himself from U.S. Rep Tom Cotton, his conservative Republican opponent, it’s clear there is a trouble in Liberalville. Pryor ‘s latest ad features McCain’s quote that “anyone who calls it amnesty is not being intellectually honest,” fires back at a recent Cotton campaign ad, saying Pryor “voted for amnesty and citizenship for illegals.” “Mark Pryor voted the same way as John McCain and many other Republican senators,” Pryor’s ad defends. “Secure the border first.” Very McCainesque, indeed.

PPP's newest Arkansas poll continues to find an incredibly tight race for the Senate. Republican Tom Cotton is at 41% to 39% for Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor, 4% for Green Party candidate Mark Swaney, and 3% for Libertarian Nathan LaFrance. All four PPP surveys of this race in the last year have found the candidates within 3 points of each other one way or another. When supporters of the third party hopefuls are asked who they would choose between the two major party candidates, Cotton's lead remains 2 points at 43/41, suggesting this may be a race where their presence...

The former Clinton home is now a well-appointed museum. The old two-lane road in front grew into a bustling artery leading to a Wal-Mart. Across the street sits a taco truck, whose owner, immigrant Elvia Bello, sells her famous tamales to the small but growing Latino population in the once-segregated community. But perhaps the biggest change of all in a state that once had reliably elected Democrats is the sandwich-board sign on a corner with hand-painted letters announcing: "Tea Party Meeting 4th Thursday 7 p.m." The Arkansas target is Sen. Mark Pryor thoroughly embraced by his state six years ago...

For five decades of Saturdays, Jerry's Barber Shop has been a center of Arkansas politics, servicing receding hairlines for governors, legislators and judges alongside the voters who elect and reject them. "I know how to make a politician tell the truth," owner Jerry Hood says, "put a razor to his neck." That joke never fails. On this Saturday morning, Hood's audience consists of two fellow barbers and four customers, including me – and the crowd guffaws while I blindly scribble quotes in a notepad beneath my barber's smock. I've ordered a Number 1 buzz cut. "People are sick and tired...

At the start of the 2014 election cycle, Mark Pryor's future in the Senate was widely considered as dead as the raccoons at the Gillett Coon Supper, an annual fundraiser and gathering spot for Arkansas pols. ....... A series of Pryor television ads focus on Medicare and Social Security, hitting his opponent for supporting Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, which would alter the structure of the programs and increase the eligibility age. It’s a well-worn strategy used by Democrats in states and districts across the country and designed to portray their adversaries as extreme. But there are a couple of particular...

A new poll of registered voters in Arkansas shows Democratic sentaor Mark Pryor leading his Republican challenger, Tom Cotton, by 11 points. Pryor receives 51 percent support,

Republicans need to win six Senate seats to take control of the upper chamber, and most scenarios for victory include the Southern seats up for grabs. A poll out today from the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that may be tougher than first thought. Mark Pryor, considered to be one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the midterms, has a ten-point lead over his Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton: The survey underscores a favorable political environment over all for Republicans in Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas — states President Obama lost in 2012 and where...

On paper, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) should be this cycle’s most endangered incumbent.But rumors of his political death might have been premature.Eight months from Election Day, the centrist Democrat is still neck and neck with or ahead of his GOP opponent in private and partisan polls. An independent poll this week showed Pryor up 3 points and a second on Thursday put him up 10 points, despite a sour national climate and $6 million in negative ads already spent against him.Armed with a top recruit in freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, Republicans thought this was the year they would finally take...

The Republican National Committee began running ads in 40 media markets Tuesday mostly targeting incumbent senators who supported President Barack Obama’s health care program. Billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, gave $2.5 million to help Democrats defend their majority in the Senate. The early action suggests Republicans see the president’s signature domestic achievement as their way to keep control of the House and perhaps win the Senate. With more than 300 days remaining before Election Day, both sides are looking to set the agenda before voters start paying attention. “Obamacare is going to be the issue in 2014,”...

Kellyanne Conway’s group did the polling. It’s not one of the news group polls, which use a Democratic and Republican pollster together. Can’t make Pryor feel good: Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor trails his Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton, by seven points among likely voters in Arkansas, 48 percent to 41 percent, according to a new poll from a conservative group that says his support of the health care reform law is costing him.The survey, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was conducted Friday and Saturday for the Citizens United Political Victory Fund by Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway of the polling company, Inc./WomanTrend....

Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor is trailing Republican challenger Rep. Tom Cotton in the Arkansas Senate race according to a poll released Monday. Forty-eight percent of respondents support Cotton compared to 41 percent behind the incumbent Pryor, according to the poll. The poll shows that the race has taken a turn due to Pryor’s support for Obamacare, according to Politico. The last published numbers from this marquee match-up came in the midst of October’s government shutdown and before the national focus turned to the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, which Pryor voted for. Four polls taken that month showed the race within...

KATV) Sen. Mark Pryor is out with a new TV ad offering a Biblical solution to the already heated 2014 Senate race in Arkansas. Pryor's campaign said the ad will begin airing on Wednesday. In the 30 second ad, Pryor speaks directly to the camera about his faith in the Bible. The ad is a substantial purchase for the campaign and will run statewide. "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. And neither political party is always right,"...

Former Republican Congressman and Drug Czar Asa Hutchinson (at right) holds an eight-point lead over his Democratic rival for governor, former Democratic Rep. Mike Ross, D. The two men are vying to replace Gov. Mike Beebe, D, who defeated Hutchinson for the job in 2006 but cannot run again due to term limits. The Conservative Intel poll of Arkansas, whose Senate results were released yesterday, was conducted by Harper Polling and surveyed 587 likely voters in the state...

When U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, R (at right) announces his candidacy for Senate at a barbecue this evening, he will be doing so as an early frontrunner in a 2014 race that could ultimately determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Mayors Against Illegal guns — a group of nearly 1,000 mayors, the vast majority of whom are Democrats — lacks any obvious Republican target to lash out at over last week’s gun control defeat in the Senate. So the group is now mulling over how to express its rage, and the likely victim appears to be two-term U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. President Obama’s post-campaign campaign just scared Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., into retirement after his “no” vote last week. The mayors’ group now wants Pryor’s scalp on their wall — even if there’s no other Democrat in line to...

Just received the call. He will announce his candidacy Wednesday in Prescott at 7:45 a.m.