Another writer, Jon Swaine from The Guardian, takes a crack at profiling the race between Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor and Republican challenger Tom Cotton.

It’s familiar ground by now. Huge outside money. Comfortable old-shoe candidate versus brash ultra-conservative challenger. The Kochs. Cotton’s many votes against popular programs. His ideological zeal. His personality.

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There was this quote, styled as unapproved but given Cotton rigid message control, almost certainly the person quoted was approved to speak to a reporter at some level:

“He’s had kind of a bad press for being unapproachable and rigid,” one member of Cotton’s entourage, who was not authorised to speak to the press, said at the church bazaar. “I don’t see that. Maybe he’s a little on a different intellectual level. But I don’t see he’s unapproachable.”

See? Cotton is not a bad guy. He’s just smarter than the rest of us dumb Arkies.

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I’ve altered the original post to make clear my belief that a Cotton aide wouldn’t speak to a reporter on any level — for quote or for background, without some level of approval from a rigidly disciplined campaign. I did not mean to suggest the words themselves were approved. Cotton is tone deaf at times, but not that stupid.

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