Born in Russellville, Arkansas, Cotton is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He worked as a law clerk and as an attorney in private practice before joining in the U.S. Army in 2005. Cotton served a tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, before leaving the military with the rank of captain in 2009. He worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company before returning to his hometown of Dardanelle, Arkansas to work on his family’s cattle farm.
His father is a Vietnam War veteran who served with the 4th Infantry Division. After graduating from Dardanelle High School in June 1995, he attended Harvard College, where he served as a columnist for the Harvard Crimson, and a member of the Harvard Republican Club. After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government, he went on to Harvard Law School, where he received his law degree in June 2002.
In June 2006, Cotton gained public attention after he wrote an open letter to The New York Times criticizing the paper’s publication of an article detailing a Bush administration secret program monitoring terrorists’ finances in which he called for three journalists, including the Times’ editor, Bill Keller, to be imprisoned for espionage. The article was widely circulated online and reprinted in full in several newspapers.
He served as a clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith and then engaged in private practice as an attorney with the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and Cooper & Kirk, where he concentrated in labor, employment, and constitutional law, in cases at all levels of state and federal courts. After leaving active duty, Cotton joined McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm. He subsequently returned to Dardanelle, where he works on his family’s cattle farm.
MP is toast in this election, and rightfully so! Go AR Pubbies!