With a last name like Cotton, the media is going to make him out to be a slave owner. The uninformed voters will believe it, too.
Soon as you said that I got this image in my head of one of those bleak campaign ads of a series of black and white still-frames of dirty crying children put to Dixie thrown into a minor key :(
It would backfire badly unless somebody could produce pictures of him dressed up as a Grand Dragon or something.