Since his loss in May to three-term state senator and business owner Chuck Edwards, Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn hasn’t been up to much more than spitting chewing tobacco and avoiding doing his actual job for his constituents in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District.
According to reporting by The Washington Post, in the past five months, the first-term House member has voted by proxy 86 times and mostly handed over his votes to his MAGA crew of deplorables: Rep. Lauren Boebert, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Louie Gohmert, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Of the 11 bills he’s introduced, only one has gotten support and co-sponsorship—the repeal of the National Firearms Act.
Cawthorn must be somewhere still licking his wounds because, as the Post reports, his name was the only one missing from North Carolina’s congressional districts in a letter to President Joe Biden asking to declare an emergency in the state following Hurricane Ian. And he was nowhere to be found when former President Donald Trump made a recent appearance at a rally in the state last month.
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Michele Woodhouse, the 11th District’s former Republican chair, who ran against Cawthorn, tells the Post, “He’s not anywhere to be found [...] I don’t hear from anyone that there’s any great interest in what Madison Cawthorn is doing.”
In May, after Cawthorn’s loss, Daily Kos’ David Nir wrote that things began to go south for the 27-year-old congressman when he announced on a podcast that an unnamed colleague invited him to an “orgy” where he witnessed well-known conservatives doing “a key bump of cocaine.” Cawthorn’s thin veneer of self-destructiveness began to crack completely.
Not to mention the two times he attempted to carry loaded guns through airport security, the videos showing him wearing women’s lingerie at a party, or his alleged mismanagement of money via campaign spending and insider trading—all of which he’s facing investigations into or charges for.
“The GOP has essentially begun to step away from Cawthorn. During the May primaries, they threw their support behind Edwards,” Nir wrote.
"It comes down to focus on the district, producing results for the district, and in my opinion, Mr. Cawthorn hasn't demonstrated much in the way of results over the last 18 months,” Sen. Thom Tillis said, highlighting that Cawthorn had little regard for his job and cared more about his future in D.C. politics.
George Erwin, a retired Henderson County sheriff and a fallen-away early Cawthorn supporter, told the Post, “All he has done is fly around the country and live high on the hog.”
Erwin added: “Madison Cawthorn did this to himself [...] He could have gone up there and been something, but he blew it. Nobody talks about him anymore. As time goes on, he will fade away.”
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