Madison Cawthorn faces primary voters on Tuesday


Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) will face primary voters Tuesday amid a series of controversies that have built up around her in recent months.

Cawthorn is being challenged by state Sen. Chuck Edwards (R), who has been endorsed by North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis (R) and several other candidates for the Republican nomination in the state’s 11th congressional district.

Republican candidates for the job also include Rod Honeycutt, Michele Woodhouse, Matthew Burril, Wendy Navarez, Bruce O’Connell and Kristie Sluder.

Recent polls have indicated that incumbent Cawthorn has more support among primary voters than other candidates.

AN poll commissioned by the Republican Election Fund GOPAC found that Cawthorn fell from 49 percent support among respondents in March to 38 percent in April.

If he secures that share of the vote in Tuesday’s primary, Cawthorn would exceed the 30 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

However, the April poll, conducted on April 25 and 26, does not reflect the most recent controversies facing Cawthorn.

The 26-year-old congressman was cited for trying to get a loaded gun through security at a North Carolina airport on April 26, prompting Democrats to call for a TSA crackdown on firearms and more. gun regulations at the US Capitol

A day later, Sen. Thom Tillis (RN.C.) called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate Cawthorn over allegations of insider trading related to the congressman’s support of cryptocurrency Let’s Go Brandon.

“Insider trading by a member of Congress is a serious betrayal of his oath of office, and Congressman Cawthorn owes North Carolinians an explanation. There should be a thorough, bipartisan investigation into the matter by the House Ethics Committee,” Tillis said.

The anti-Cawthorn American Muckrakers PAC filed an ethics complaint against the North Carolina lawmaker the same week it raised concerns about gifts Cawthorn allegedly gave his congressional office programmer, a distant cousin the congressman claims was he is like a brother to him. However, his long personal friendship and other exceptions to the House rules governing gifts make the situation murky.

The ethics complaint was accompanied by a video of Cawthorn making sexual jokes with the same male employee.

In the latest and most heated incident, the PAC itself released a video showing Cawthorn nude, which the congressman later called “blackmail.”

“I am NOT backing down,” Cawthorn tweeted after the video was released, which he excused because it showed him and a friend “acting goofy and kidding around.”

These scandals follow in the wake of others around Cawthorn that have been piling up since the beginning of the year.

The congressman received a legal challenge in January that was aimed at disqualifying him from running for a second term for his participation in a rally prior to the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. The suit was ultimately blocked by a federal judge in early March. .

Cawthorn was charged with driving on a revoked license for the second time in March, and photos of the congressman dressed in women’s underwear at an apparent party were leaked in April.

Republican leadership publicly disagreed with Cawthorn after he claimed in March that his fellow lawmakers had invited him to an orgy and that he had seen other members of Congress using cocaine. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in response to Cawthorn’s comments: “He has to turn around.”

McCarthy previously criticized Cawthorn for calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “thug” and the Ukrainian government “incredibly corrupt and… incredibly evil” just two weeks after the Russian invasion of the country.

“Madison is wrong,” McCarthy stated plainly.

In another controversy, a secretly recorded phone call was made public in April in which a Cawthorn’s former staffer accused him of denying her family and medical leave while working for him and then improperly firing her from her job. The legislator and his office vehemently denied the allegations.

The winner of the GOP primary on May 17 will face a Democrat for the seat in the election on November 8, 2022.



Reference-thehill.com

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