Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton says his defeat of incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor was less about the candidates than about governance of the nation.
Speaking to supporters in Little Rock on Tuesday night, Cotton acknowledged that most people had expected him to win, but said the win came bigger and earlier than expected.
He called his victory the result of "a choice to live as a free people and to govern ourselves freely under the greatest Constitution in history."
"We have again chosen constitutional self-government, which allows each of us to flourish according to his abilitites and industry . . . and to control our government rather than be controlled by it.
"We reject pessimism and defeatism inherent in the other way of governing, the centralizing and bureaucratic rule of presumed elites."
Like most Republicans this election cycle, Cotton tied the incumbent Pryor to President Barack Obama. He invoked Obama's primary victory speech from 2008, when Obama said the moment would be remembered as the time the planet began to heal.
"I won't promise to heal the planet or repair every broken institution, but I will promise to act with integrity and principle and to use politics as an instrument to unite us, not a weapon to divide us," Cotton said.