Madison Cawthorn means to “shoot the moon” on scandal
Early voting begins Thursday in the 2022 North Carolina primaries. While I avoid giving space to my media-hound of a congressperson, he managed a scandal double-tap on Tuesday. Madison Cawthorn is next-level.
Let’s start with his second federal “weapon law violation” (The Hill):
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) was cited Tuesday for trying to bring a loaded gun through TSA at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department confirmed with Queen City News (QCN).
For variety, Cawthorn this time brought a different gun than when he was first stopped last summer by TSA. That was a Glock. This time he chose a Staccato. Both in fashionable black.
Jonathan Chait wants to know what the hell is going on with Cawthorn. “Is he a secret Nazi? Some kind of sex weirdo? A compulsive liar?” Chait thinks he’s determined to shoot the moon on scandals. I think he’s compiling an audition tape for Fox News.
By its absence, Chait’s column at New York Magazine must have filed before Cawthorn’s new weapons charge. He leads instead with the insider trading:
The newest revelation, via the conservative Washington Examiner, is that Cawthorn may have violated federal insider-trading laws. On December 29, Cawthorn posted a photo on social media with the main investor in Let’s Go Brandon coin, a cryptocurrency, writing, “LGB legends. … Tomorrow we go to the moon!” The next day, the coin announced a deal that made its value soar 75 percent. Its value has since dropped to 0, but Cawthorn’s promotion may indicate he participated in a pump-and-dump scheme.
A financial-engineering crime would round out the impressively broad portfolio of scandals Cawthorn has amassed in a short period of time.
Chait reviews Cawthorn’s greatest hits. I won’t repeat them here except to note the “Christian” conservative’s eight-month-short, failed marriage that Chait does not. Cawthorn’s traffic stops are by now legendary. The moment his second and third stops made the papers, a knowledgeable source tells me, he dispatched a staffer to pay his first fine in Buncombe County before the charge could be reviewed.
Chait adds:
Taken as a whole, the list runs from the self-interested to the self-destructive, from culturally Neanderthal to libertine, and from ideological to pure frat boy. Possibly, Cawthorn decided that, having started his career in a deep hole of scandal, his best hope for success lay in somehow shooting the moon. Or perhaps he is in the middle of some Brewster’s Millions–style gonzo scandal jag that stands to win him a huge fortune if he can round out the portfolio with, say, a dead stripper in his car and a charge of hunting an endangered species.
What it means locally is, starting tomorrow, voters in NC-11 will get a chance to determine whether the kid gets yet another of his second chances. The state’s Republican establishment has already had enough of Cawthorn’s bad press. (See update below.) After new congressional maps were revealed, Cawthorn announced he would renounce his NC-11 constituents to run in what he thought a more favorable district (NC-13) until courts ordered that district redrawn. Then he came crawling back to ask for votes in NC-11.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis has endorsed state Sen. Chuck Edwards, one of Cawthorn’s seven Republican primary challengers. Edwards may be no less fringe than Cawthorn, just more subtle and tasteful about it.
Michelle Woodhouse, cousin to Dallas Woodhouse, the NCGOP’s clown-in-residence and former state executive director, is also running to unseat Cawthorn.
The other five candidates may also draw off some votes. A winner must earn at least 30 percent on May 17 or else the top two candidates go to a July runoff.
Cawthorn’s problem Among Cawthorn’s problems is his principal vote comes from his home in Republican-heavy Henderson County. Both Edwards and Woodhouse live in Henderson. A three-way split there could either end Cawthorn’s career or force a runoff, most likely with Edwards.
Some of my progressive friends have changed their registrations to UNAffiliated to be able to vote against Cawthorn in North Carolina’s partially closed Republican primary. A waste. The numbers are not there to be meaningful, but they want the emotional satisfaction. They lose their chance to select the Democrats who will run locally and statewide this fall. Their loss.
Update: This popped up after the post went live. Fellow NC Republican Tillis calls for Cawthorn insider trading investigation
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.