Hallie Shoffner is racing against the odds for U.S. Senate

The number six has dominated Hallie Shoffner’s life. She was a sixth-generation farmer from Jackson County. During February of 2025 she had six spreadsheets each depicting different scenarios about how the next planting season would go.

There was only one problem. None of the scenarios would turn a profit. Shoffner had to make the toughest decision of her life. She had to shutter her farm and seed company, SFR Seed, she told Talk Business & Politics.

Now that she’s out of the farm business, she is seeking a six-year term in the U.S. Senate. To get that she’ll have to win as a Democrat in a heavily red state and defeat two-term incumbent U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

She had taken over the farm from her parents in 2016. They are retired and her father is suffering from dementia.

“I had six different spreadsheets … nothing worked,” she said. “We were tenant farmers. We owned about 350 acres but leased about 1,650. I told my mom I couldn’t promise her we wouldn’t lose our land. I couldn’t promise her they wouldn’t lose their house. Nearly 25% of the farms in Arkansas went bankrupt in 18 months. While we were struggling, Tom Cotton did nothing.”

HEALTHCARE FOCUS
Defeating Cotton will be a daunting task.

Arkansas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 2014, and the state has become one of the most reliably Republican in the entire country.

Shoffner does have some history on her side when it comes to women from Northeast Arkansas being elected to the U.S. Senate, however. U.S. Sen. Hattie Caraway, D-Ark. was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first woman to preside over the Senate, the first to chair a Senate committee, and the first to preside over a Senate hearing. The Jonesboro native served from 1931 to 1945 after finishing her husband’s term following his unexpected death, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

In 1998, Helena native and former U.S. Rep. Blanche Lincoln was elected to the U.S. Senate, and at 37 years old she was the youngest woman ever elected to the chamber. She also served two terms.

If elected, Shoffner said she will have a number of priorities. She will place all of her assets in a blind trust. She will support a ban on stock trading for elected officials. She won’t take money from corporations.

One issue that doesn’t get discussed enough and most politicians do nothing about is healthcare, she said. Not enough people have adequate coverage, and even if they do there are other problems with the system, she said.

“Everybody needs healthcare,” Shoffner said. “Everybody has to have health insurance. If we all share the cost, it goes down. It’s just basic economics.”

She said a 79-year-old retired teacher from Dumas who can’t drive has to ride a shared bus for 12 hours to receive treatments in Little Rock. She could receive the same treatments in Monticello and it’s 30 minutes away. But it’s not in her network, Shoffner said.

INFRASTRUCTURE FOCUS
An ironic aspect about Arkansas is that it’s one of the leading agriculture states in the country, but it’s also a leader when it comes to food insecurity. Most of the state’s farm acres are dedicated to crops that people don’t actually eat, she said. A way to fix that would be for farmers to expand into specialty crops like aromatic rice. Those crops make farmers more money, but it would require a government program to get it started, she added.

Another problem that plagues the country and especially rural communities is outdated infrastructure. As she has campaigned around the state, Shoffner said she noticed a lot of dilapidated roads. Water and electrical systems are outdated and need to be replaced.

She said officials in her own party have not been engaged enough with rural America and its needs. She also noted that the country is $39 trillion in debt, and none of these problems have been fixed even though we’ve racked up this much debt.

“Our infrastructure is 40-plus years old,” she said. “We need new roads, water lines, and other utilities. These are the kind of investments we need to make. Without them, rural communities will die. It never changes. It’s just bad federal policy.”

Arkansas has been hit with drought, flooding, and other natural disasters such as tornadoes. There has been an attempt at the federal level, led by President Donald Trump, to cut some programs such as Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Shoffner said she will actively support funding agencies like FEMA.

The candidate who hails from the township of Shoffner knows she faces long odds. The non-partisan Cook Political Report has the race heavily in Cotton’s favor. But it wouldn’t be the first time someone in her family or a woman seeking office from Northeast Arkansas has beat long odds.

“If I can’t farm, I’m going to fight,” she said.