NC Democrats got what they wanted Tuesday night, but so did Republicans
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) is toast. Western North Carolina’s bad-boy Republican congressman lost his first reelection bid to State Senator Chuck Edwards. Edwards decisively defeated Cawthorn in the Republican primary by 18 points in their shared home county of Henderson, the most Republican large county in NC-11. Edwards topped Cawthorn by 11 points in neighboring Buncombe County, the largest in the district. Edwards won the Republican nomination Tuesday night by 33.4 to 31.9.
A noticeable (though undecisive) fraction of Democrats switched registration to UNAffiliated for the emotional satisfaction of voting against Cawthorn in the GOP primary.
Connected Republicans hated Cawthorn more. They could tolerate the 26-year-old’s multiple traffic and weapons charges, crassness, allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement in office, and possible insider trading. What they could not abide was the dude going public with lurid stories of D.C. colleagues’ cocaine-fueled orgies. (Has he ever denied attending?) That was Republicans’ red line of political death. They unleashed a (telling?) fury of political oppo against the freshman “embarrassment.” Last night the party delivered the coup de grâce.
Therein lies the problem.
Cawthorn is to Donald Trump as Edwards is to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Comparatively, someone suggested, Edwards is “All the MAGA with half the frat!” Cawthorn was a joke. Edwards is as far right, if not more, just not as flamboyant about it. And worse. He can actually do damage.
Democrats got what they wanted last night.
Cawthorn was hissing air like a slowly deflating baloon. Had Cawthorn won the nomination, Democrats with the right candidate might have had a shot, if a long one, at retaking the seat. Now that hill is even steeper. Democrats who have served in the state legislature with Edwards say he will be a serious threat in Congress.
James Fallows is worried too. There is a “gentleman’s agreement” prevalent in the press not to speak of the unspeakable. I described it Tuesday as a focus on the jockeys and not the horses. In this case, the horse Republicans are riding is the anti-democracy, MAGA radicalism of what was once a conservative party:
Trumpist candidates for state offices across the nation are promising or threatening to take election results into their own hands in 2024, if they gain power. And every political-handicapping article presenting this as midterm politics-as-usual essentially looks the other way. As Margaret Sullivan eloquently argued here.
“Nice” people still are not talking about just where the MAGA candidates across the country mean to take this country. We’d rather pretend this is all politics-as-usual than consider the existential threat hanging over our republic.
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