Tom Cotton of McLean, Virginia, wants to keep representing Arkansas in the U.S. Senate

On his Arkansas voter registration form, Sen. Tom Cotton claims his permanent residence as a 905-square-foot apartment near downtown Little Rock. In that very narrow sense, he “lives” in Arkansas. By any other measure — and through any fair-minded review of the available evidence — Tom Cotton seemingly calls Virginia home in every way except the elected office he currently holds.

This is not exactly breaking news. It was covered extensively six years ago, both by the Arkansas Times and on Blue Hog Report. But a lot can happen in that length of time, and paper trails that didn’t exist in 2020 can shed more light in 2026. With an election in the offing and questions swirling about which candidate for U.S. Senate actually cares about Arkansas and Arkansans, the question of whether the current senator even lives in the state is one worth revisiting.

Trust, but verify 

The story starts in 2020, when Arkansas Times Editor emeritus Max Brantley reported that Tom and Anna Cotton had purchased a home in Little Rock. Following up on this tip, Brantley learned that the Cottons’ voter registration did not show up on the state’s online repository of voter information. This is not entirely uncommon — state law allows the withholding of that information upon request, though it’s more often done to keep addresses hidden in cases of domestic abuse than to hide the registration of an elected official. But that doesn’t make their actual voter-registration forms confidential.

A request under Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act for the Cottons’ Pulaski County voter registration forms turned up an address: 724 North St., Apt. 71, Little Rock, AR 72201.

Pulaski County property records showed the Cottons’ listed address was owned not by Tom and Anna Cotton, but by Pine & Birch Revocable Trust, which had purchased the residence in April 2019.

Further digging revealed that the trustee of the Pine & Birch Revocable Trust was Edward “Ted” Dickey, son of the late Congressman Jay Dickey and former Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court Betty Dickey.

Public records also showed that Dickey used P.O. Box 17674 in Little Rock for work-related mail, both in his role as a lawyer and for other business. That’s the same address listed on the Cottons’ voter registration forms as the address where they receive mail. 

Adding to the general lack of clarity around Tom Cotton’s residence in 2020 was that public records showed he paid his personal property taxes that year in Yell County.  By law, the assessment deadline is May 31 of each year, so his 2020 bill would have been based on where he assessed in 2019. Considering he bought the Little Rock residence in April 2019, the only way Tom Cotton’s tax bill/payment in 2020 makes sense is if they did not move to Little Rock until after May 31, 2019. That would have made them Yell County residents for personal property purposes for 2019 (as paid in 2020).

Even if the apartment sat unoccupied by the Cottons until some time in June 2019, they still would have been expected to assess their personal property the following year in Pulaski County by May 31. According to the Pulaski County Assessor’s Office in June 2020, they had “no assessment for Thomas B. Cotton and/or Anna Cotton and no assessment by anyone at 724 North St. Apt 71 in Little Rock.”

Home away from home

Setting aside any lingering questions with how and when the Cottons came to be in possession of their Little Rock abode, details about that property could theoretically provide a roadmap to figuring out where the Cottons actually live.

For instance, there’s the financing on the Little Rock apartment. When the trust first purchased the apartment for the Cottons in 2019, the mortgage was held by First Security Bank, an Arkansas-based bank. That makes sense for an Arkansas senator buying a property in Arkansas.

In February 2022, however, the Cottons refinanced that mortgage and moved it to Chain Bridge Bank in McLean, Virginia. It was the only loan Chain Bridge Bank made in Arkansas that entire year.

Refinancing with Chain Bridge Bank in McLean is particularly interesting since Senate financial disclosures filed by Tom Cotton show him with another mortgage, for a property valued between $1 million and $5 million, also financed through that bank in 2021.

While the Cottons’ purchase of a residence in Virginia has been noted by others, Fairfax County (VA) property records are not searchable by a person’s name, so pinning down an exact street address had long proven elusive for others attempting to solve this whole riddle.

Looking at publicly available filings required under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and filtering those for 2021 loan originations in the D.C area, first liens, purchase amounts than seemed within Cotton’s financial reach, and applicant/co-applicant ages 35–44, the Arkansas Times, with the help of citizen journalist Jay Orsi, turned up four potential properties. Of these, three appeared unlikely to be the right house: one in Arlington was a refinance and was listed as a principal residence for the owners, one in Culpepper, 90 minutes away from D.C., seemed geographically unlikely, and one in Fairfax did not have the right ethnicity disclosed for the buyers.

The fourth property was a June 25, 2021, purchase of 6907 Pine Crest Ave. in McLean, VA. The house was purchased for $2.4 million and was secured by a $1.9 million mortgage through Chain Bridge Bank. The interest rate on the mortgage – 2.49% – also matches the interest rate reported by Cotton in his financial disclosure. 

Recall that the Little Rock apartment was purchased by a trust, perhaps in an effort to conceal that Tom and Anna Cotton were the owners. Since Tom Cotton did not object when President Donald Trump recently shared the senator’s cell phone number with the world, we figured it would be alright for us to pass along his likely address. According to Fairfax County property records, the Pine Crest Avenue house was also purchased by a trust. This time, the trustee was Chain Bridge Bank, the same bank the Cottons refinanced the Little Rock property through in 2022. 

Adding to the likelihood that the Pine Crest Avenue house is where Tom Cotton lives, the property has been blurred out on Google Street View. It’s also blurred out on Zillow and Realtor.com. 

It’s not just the mortgage records and a blurry picture that support the idea that Tom Cotton lives in this particular house. The Times uncovered additional supporting evidence that suggests that McLean, Virginia, is where the Cottons live.

Multiple states’ bar associations list Anna Cotton as living and practicing law in some capacity. According to lawyer database Martindale-Hubbell, she is licensed to practice law in Montana, Wyoming and Minnesota. A search of the Montana Bar attorney list shows Anna Cotton living in McLean:

The Minnesota Bar shows the same:

As does the Wyoming Bar:

McLean is also where SLG Solutions, the consulting firm founded by Anna Cotton, is located, as well as being less than 10 miles from the headquarters of ClearForce, a risk analytics company for which Anna Cotton is a board member. Additionally, McLean is where Cotton’s eldest son, Gabriel, plays Little League Baseball.

Why does this matter?

It’s not particularly uncommon for a U.S. senator to buy or rent a home in the greater D.C. area while in office. That’s likely even more true for a senator who has a wife and children. So, from that perspective, the Cottons owning a home in Virginia doesn’t matter a whole lot.

Still, there are two areas where this might matter. The first is in the context of the general belief that Tom Cotton does not live in Arkansas in any meaningful sense of the word and is just using the Little Rock apartment as an address so he can pretend to still be an Arkansas resident for election and voting purposes.

It’s a compelling argument, given what is known. In Virginia, the Cottons apparently have a five-bedroom, four-bath, multimillion-dollar home, and they definitely have Anna Cotton’s business and other corporate interests, as well as the Cottons’ children’s friends and teammates. In Little Rock, they have a two-bedroom, two-bath, 905-square-foot apartment at which he’s almost never been seen or heard.

The other way that Tom Cotton living in Virginia arguably matters is in his and his wife’s voter registration generally. Under Arkansas law, “the place where a person’s family resides is presumed to be his or her place of domicile.” Tom Cotton’s family resides in Virginia to such an extent that Anna Cotton hasn’t even come to Arkansas to vote since November 2014. Her last eleven Arkansas ballots have been absentee, mailed to her home in Virginia.

Of course, moving away from Arkansas does not automatically disqualify someone from remaining an Arkansas voter. What matters is intent. For a person living abroad, their permanent residence is defined as where they intend to return after they are done with whatever has taken them away from the state. 

As it currently stands, to believe Arkansas is still Tom Cotton’s permanent residence is to buy the idea that, when he’s done serving in the U.S. Senate, he and his family intend to return to an apartment in Little Rock that is roughly a third the size of his multimillion-dollar Virginia home. Given that he has spent almost zero time in that apartment in the six years since he purchased it, and given that his wife and kids have apparently never stayed in that apartment or attended school in Arkansas, that seems like quite a stretch.