Hallie Shoffner, the Democratic Senate nominee in Arkansas, has repeatedly blasted her opponent Sen. Tom Cotton (R.) for supporting the war in Iran, which she says has caused gas prices to spike in recent weeks. But Shoffner previously joined a left-wing climate group due to its explicit support for a carbon tax experts said would cause price hikes for Americans.
Shoffner said in 2020 that she joined Citizens' Climate Lobby, a nonprofit based in Coronado, Calif., because it had advocated for the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, a bill she argued provides a solution "as real and immediate as climate change itself." The bill—which was first introduced in the House in 2018, but has not received a floor vote—taxes fossil fuels, charging companies $15 per metric ton of carbon emissions at its onset before increasing the fee by $10 or $15 each year based on emission levels.
The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that the legislation, if passed, would have a particularly acute impact on farmers, including those in Arkansas who Shoffner has claimed during her campaign to "fight for" as a lifelong farmer herself. The cost of corn, for example, would increase 16 percent after 10 years and corn exports would decrease 5 percent under the bill, according to an Iowa State University analysis. The export decline alone could cost American farmers roughly $700 million a year.
"It would squeeze already thin margins, reduce competitiveness against foreign producers who face no similar tax, and hit rural communities first and hardest," American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac told the Free Beacon in February.
That hasn’t stopped her from repeatedly attacking Cotton over high prices at the pump. Shoffner argued that, because Cotton has supported the war in Iran while serving on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, he is responsible for higher gas prices that have come during the war.
"Arkansan families were already struggling before the war in Iran because of inflation and because nobody has good health care," Shoffner said in a recent video posted on social media. "Tom Cotton has everything to do with $4 per gallon gas. No, the people of Arkansas do not buy that we had to go to war with Iran. Tom, you cannot blame anyone else for these high gas prices. Just because you can afford to buy gas right now does not mean that your constituents can."
According to the latest AAA data, the average price of gas in Arkansas is $3.89 a gallon, roughly $1.26-a-gallon more expensive than it was prior to the Iran war. Gas prices in Arkansas, though, remain some of the least expensive in the nation and have decreased by about $0.15 over the last week. Cotton and President Donald Trump have said that higher pump prices would be a worthy and temporary sacrifice for a much-weakened Iranian regime and greater stability in the Middle East.
Although Shoffner has been quick to criticize Cotton over high gas prices, she has been less eager to talk about the record gas prices experienced during the Biden administration. When asked about how gas prices were higher under former president Joe Biden, she told a user on X to "cry about four years ago if you like."
"Tom Cotton says that gas prices were high under Biden because of electric vehicle policies. Who cares? That was four years ago. We live in 2026," she added in a separate post.
Shoffner, who made several small-dollar donations to former president Joe Biden’s and former vice president Kamala Harris’s presidential campaigns totaling $416, according to Federal Election Commission records, supported their administration’s landmark climate spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. She wrote in 2022 that the legislation was a "promising development for Arkansas farmers" and addresses "the root cause of the agriculture sector’s challenges: climate change."
The Inflation Reduction Act was designed to force a rapid green energy transition in the United States and incentivize Americans to buy electric vehicles. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School estimated the bill’s climate provisions would cost Americans more than $1 trillion.
