Iraq and Afghanistan and earned a Bronze Star as a U.S. Army Ranger even though he did not serve in the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment. Fact-checking site Snopes rated Salon's reporting as true. In response to the article, Democratic congressman Jason Crow, who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, criticized Cotton for calling himself a Ranger. A spokesperson for Cotton said, "To be clear, as he's stated many times, Senator Cotton graduated from Ranger School, earned the Ranger Tab, and served a combat tour with the 101st Airborne, not the 75th Ranger Regiment." As the Salon story garnered widespread attention, Cotton's spokeswoman recommended that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette talk to retired Command Sergeant Major Rick Merritt, a former regimental sergeant major of the 75th Ranger Regiment, who said that Cotton is "100% a Ranger. He will always be a Ranger. It’s unfair. It’s almost slanderous." In an article on the controversy, Business Insider wrote, "[w]hile the distinction [between being a "Ranger" and attending Ranger School] is rarely brought up outside of military circles, it has been fiercely debated among veterans and encapsulates the nuances of military titles." Cotton dismissed allegations of falsifying his military record as politically driven. "I graduated from the Ranger School, I wore the Ranger tab in combat with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. This is not about my military record. This is about my politics." Political career Shortly after Cotton's Afghanistan deployment ended, he was introduced to Chris Chocola, a former congressman and the president of Club for Growth, a Republican political action committee that became one of Cotton's top contributors. Cotton considered a run against incumbent Democratic U.S. senator Blanche Lincoln in 2010 but declined due to lack of donors and believing it was premature. After the retirement announcement of Democratic incumbent Mike Ross in 2011, Cotton ran for Congress in Arkansas's 4th congressional district. Following his active duty service, Cotton went to work for management consulting firm McKinsey & Company before running for Congress in Arkansas's 4th congressional district when Democratic incumbent Mike Ross announced in 2011 that he would not seek reelection. U.S. House of Representatives Elections 2012 In September 2011, Arkansas Times editor Max Brantley, criticized Cotton for a 1998 article he wrote in The Harvard Crimson in which he questioned the internet's value as a teaching tool in the classroom, saying the internet had "too many temptations" to be useful in schools