Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) lost the primary contest in the state’s 11th District, marking a major victory for establishment Republicans there, who were seeking to unseat the freshman lawmaker.
Midterm primaries: Scandal-plagued Rep. Cawthorn loses in N.C. GOP primary
Despite the crowded field, state Sen. Chuck Edwards, who had the backing of top Republicans in the state, toppled Cawthorn without the need for a runoff.
Edwards will face Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a minister and LGBTQ activist who won her party’s nomination, according to the Associated Press.
Controversies made Cawthorn a target of ire from establishment Republicans in his state. Among other things, he claimed that older Republicans in Congress invited him to an “orgy” and said he’d seen lawmakers doing cocaine in Washington. He also got in trouble with law enforcement multiple times over the past year, including speeding citations and charges for driving with a revoked license.
Cawthorn had accused his own party of mounting a “coordinated drip campaign” against him.
“They’re going to drop an attack article every one or two days just to try and kill us,” he said on his Instagram account.
Edwards, meanwhile, ran a campaign ad attacking Cawthorn for being on social media too much and not focusing on his constituency.
Voters in North Carolina tried to get Cawthorn removed from the ballot by arguing that his connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection disqualified him from running for reelection. Cawthorn spoke at a pro-Trump rally held on the Ellipse before the attack and posted militant tweets ahead of the riot.
In the end, Cawthorn retained the support of former president Donald Trump, who said the 26-year-old Republican has made “some foolish mistakes, which I don’t believe he’ll make again.”
“Let’s give Madison a second chance!” Trump said in a post for his social media platform Truth Social.
Source: WP
