Potential Trump running mate Tom Cotton took hard look at 2024 run, but being a father came first

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Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is in the Trump running mate spotlight.

The Army veteran, who served in combat in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before becoming a rising star in Republican Party politics, has been viewed as a potential running mate since he endorsed the former president in early January, two weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

But a report last week that Cotton may be moving up on Trump's list for the GOP's vice presidential nominee sparked a slew of stories in recent days about the senator.

Rarely mentioned was that Cotton seriously mulled a 2024 White House run of his own before deciding against it in late 2022.

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Cotton, who won re-election by a landslide in the 2020 Senate election in red-state Arkansas, spent plenty of time in 2021 and 2022 on the campaign trail on behalf of fellow Republicans running in the midterm elections. And those trips brought the senator multiple times to Iowa and New Hampshire, which for a half century have led off the GOP's presidential nominating calendar.

The senator also bolstered his fundraising and political operation, and expanded his national profile with a book on military history.

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But days before the