Erik Dorey, Mark Pryor’s campaign spokesman, commented to me this morning on the New York Times article mentioned here last night  that reports how the insurance industry was the financial backer for an ad featuring a putative Little Rock small businessman — Republican party official and printing business scion John Parke.

The ad featuring Parke, who offered no specifics about his situation, blamed Obamacare and Mark Pryor for cost increases in his company’s health insurance plan.

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Said Dorey.

The fact is, Congressman Cotton recklessly voted to begin turning Medicare over to the insurance companies, who stand to make billions while Arkansas seniors pay more and get less. Now that Tom Cotton wants to be a senator, the insurance special interests are spending big because he has proven he’ll vote with them against Arkansas seniors and working families.

Maybe one of the reporters with Cotton press clearance to his gimmick news conference this morning (he’s rounded up some veterans to endorse him) could ask him about that. I was uninvited, as a non-journalist, Cotton spokesman David Ray said.

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Or maybe the next time Cotton takes a KATV reporter for a friendly jog, she could work in a question on his desire to privatize Medicare.

Better still — and the station could cue up some bloody crash footage to run with this — Cotton’s running chum could ask him about his statement blaming President Obama  for the downing of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine. And some of the other wacky stuff he told a right-wing talk show host last week.

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And here’s another reporter-jog-along question: Why hasn’t Cotton agreed to appear on the AETN televised debate and the Fayetteville chamber of commerce debate? Or are Senate debate questions by TV reporters — conveniently with Cotton video trackers in tow — only suitable for Mark Pryor?

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