There's a political group spending money in Arkansas's Senate race with a name built to sound like your neighbors: Arkansans for Democracy and Justice.
It is not Arkansans. Federal Election Commission filings show it is registered in Alabama, it has never received a single dollar from an individual human being, and every penny it has spent went to attacking one person — Hallie Shoffner, the Democrat running against Tom Cotton.
You don't have to take anyone's word for it. The filings are public, and they're short.
What the filings actually say
The committee is Arkansans for Democracy and Justice, FEC ID C00930966. It registered on December 16, 2025 — about ten weeks before Arkansas's March primary. Its mailing address is in Alabama. Its treasurer is Michael Landerfelt.
Through June 30, 2026, here is its entire financial life:
- Total raised: $238,395.48
- Total individual contributions: $0.00. Itemized: zero. Unitemized: zero. Not one person gave this group money.
- Contributions from other committees: $200,000.00 — a single transfer from a super PAC called America One on January 8, 2026.
- The remaining $38,395.48 came back from a Florida consulting firm as a refund of expenses.
And what did it do with the money? The FEC's spending record shows exactly one line item under independent expenditures:
$179,900.00 — Oppose SHOFFNER, HALLIE
That's it. One hundred percent of its campaign spending, against one candidate.
Its other bills went to a compliance firm in Alabama, a law firm in Texas, and a $23,000 polling contract with a firm in Arizona. Not one vendor in Arkansas. For a group named after our state, the only thing Arkansan about it is the word on the letterhead.
Where the $200,000 came from
The single donor is America One, a super PAC with a post office box in Alexandria, Virginia. It is not a mystery who America One is working for. Its own independent-expenditure filings this cycle break down into three lines:
| Amount | Purpose |
|---|---|
| $2,473,545.03 | Oppose Hallie Shoffner |
| $665,400.00 | Support Tom Cotton |
| $87,500.00 | Oppose Jon Ossoff |
Nearly a third of that anti-Shoffner spending — $776,069 — landed in July alone, after the quarterly books closed, including a single $673,069 ad buy on July 24. Not one dollar was added to the "support Cotton" column in the same stretch.
Add the $179,900 that America One's money paid for through the Alabama group, and the total spent tearing down Cotton's opponent comes to roughly $2.65 million — almost exactly four times what's been spent saying anything positive about Cotton himself.
That is the shape of this campaign. It isn't an argument for Tom Cotton. It's an argument against the sixth-generation Jackson County farmer running against him — a woman whose family left farming last year because of Trump's tariffs, which is the kind of thing a senator is supposed to have prevented.
Who funds America One
Super PACs must disclose their donors. Here is who put in $50,000 or more, straight from the FEC:
- America One Policies — $850,000. A nonprofit with the same name, which does not have to tell you where its money comes from. This is the single biggest source, and it is the one you can learn the least about.
- Big Tobacco — $400,000. Altria Client Services, which makes Marlboro, gave $300,000 across three payments. RAI Services Company — Reynolds American, which makes Camel and Newport — gave $100,000.
- Cotton Majority Committee — $236,704.78, across three transfers. That's just the checks big enough to clear this $50,000 cutoff; the real total is larger, and it has Tom Cotton's name on it. More on that in a second.
- Alexander C. Karp — $125,000. The chief executive of Palantir, the company that builds ICE's deportation software. Arkansans went to Cotton's Little Rock office this spring to ask him to cut ties with that company.
- Then a run of six-figure and $50,000 individual checks from Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, California, New York, and Florida.
Read that list again and look for Arkansas. A cigarette company in Virginia. A dark-money nonprofit. A Silicon Valley CEO in New Hampshire. Rich people in six other states.
This isn't an accident of one committee. Cotton's own campaign finance page shows 85% of his individual donations came from outside Arkansas — more from California than from the state he represents.
The part that should stop you: Cotton's own committee is in the chain
Super PACs like America One are allowed to raise and spend unlimited money on the condition that they operate independently of the candidate. So what is the Cotton Majority Committee doing sending America One $303,430.85, across six transfers, every quarter since April 2025?
Look it up and the answer is stranger than the question. Cotton Majority Committee is a joint fundraising committee — a shared bucket that raises money and splits it among a listed set of participants. The FEC lists its current participants as:
- Cotton for Senate, Inc. — his campaign
- Republican Majority Fund — a leadership PAC
- NRSC — the Senate Republicans' campaign arm
- America One — the "independent" super PAC
Cotton's campaign and the super PAC attacking his opponent are named on the same fundraising committee. That committee has moved more than $300,000 into the super PAC. The two organizations even use the same law firm — Lex Politica PLLC of Texas appears on both committees' disbursement records.
And the transfers go out together. On June 30, 2026, the Cotton Majority Committee cut its quarterly checks: $159,644.51 to Cotton for Senate, and $66,544.42 to America One. Same committee, same day, same pot of money — one check to the campaign, one to the "independent" group attacking the campaign's opponent.
Nothing here is a secret. It is all filed, all public, all legal under the rules as they currently stand. That's the part worth being angry about. The word "independent" has been hollowed out until it means nothing at all, and one of the people who could vote to change that is the man benefiting from it.
The texts
You may have gotten one. Arkansans have been receiving attack texts about Shoffner — the kind of message designed to make you afraid of a neighbor rather than to tell you anything about what your senator has done for you.
Ask yourself why $2.65 million is being spent to make you scared of a farmer from Jackson County instead of on telling you what Tom Cotton got done for Arkansas.
The answer is in his own record. He voted against the Farm Bill in 2014 and again in 2018, saying both times it spent too much on food assistance. He hasn't held a real, open town hall in Arkansas in nine years. In 2025 he skipped one to attend a $7,000-a-plate fundraiser.
When you can't run on the record, you buy a name that sounds like home and rent an address in Alabama.
The bottom line
As of June 30, Cotton had $9.9 million in the bank. Shoffner had about $864,000.
And she still outraised him last quarter — $678,000 to his $546,000 — across more than 3,700 contributions, with less than $10,000 of it from PACs. Cotton's quarter was maximum $3,500 checks from Alice, Jim, Steuart and Thomas Walton and dozens of $5,000 PAC donations. He spent nearly $1,900 of it on flowers.
He does not need a shell committee in Alabama to win this race. He has one anyway — funded by a tobacco company, a dark-money nonprofit, a surveillance contractor's CEO, and a joint fundraising committee with his own name on it.
Arkansans for Democracy and Justice has taken $0.00 from Arkansans. Remember that when the next text arrives.
Sources
Federal Election Commission filings for Arkansans for Democracy and Justice (C00930966), America One (C00728667), Cotton Majority Committee (C00774703), Cotton for Senate (C00499988), and Shoffner for Arkansas (C00905471). Receipts and cash-on-hand figures come from the July Quarterly reports, covering through June 30, 2026. Independent-expenditure figures are current through July 29, 2026, the date of the most recent 24-hour notice. Photo: U.S. Senate.
