Earlier this year, Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn was narrowly ousted in a North Carolina Primary race. The loss wasn’t surprising. For months leading up to the race, Cawthorn had suffered embarrassment after embarrassment in the press — from giving bizarre interviews in which he accused his fellow GOP members of participating in orgies and doing cocaine to speeding tickets, driving with a revoked license, and trying to carry a loaded gun into an airport (twice).
Now, The Washington Post is asking what’s next for Cawthorn, once his term ends next month. And his fellow Republicans are answering, though Cawthorn might not want to hear what they have to say.
In a new report from the paper, several Washington insiders and GOP analysts admitted Cawthorn’s going to have a tough road to redemption after hanging his party members out to dry, behaving badly in the press, and suffering leaks that included videos of him simulating sex acts on another man and wearing women’s lingerie.
“He’s not anywhere to be found,” the former chair of Cawthorn’s district, Michele Woodhouse, said. “I don’t hear from anyone that there’s any great interest in what Madison Cawthorn is doing.”
In fact, Cawthorn’s offices in his home state and in D.C. are empty, his voicemails aren’t being checked, his website hasn’t been updated in nearly a year, and he’s voted by proxy over 80 times in 2022.
“After all the shenanigans, he deserved to get beat,” pro-Trump radio host John Fredericks said. “In two years, he demonstrated an incredible lack of maturity.”
Cawthorn has allegedly said he’s taking a break from politics to focus on building a family despite announcing he and his wife were getting a divorce late last year, but even if he wanted to launch a comeback, it sounds like he’s burned too many bridges in North Carolina. The House Ethics committed opened a probe into Cawthorn’s unusual spending — thousands of campaign dollars went to cigar bars, shooting ranges, taxidermist “gifts,” and steak houses — and his more local supporters seem to have washed their hands of him because of it.
“All he has done is fly around the country and live high on the hog,” said George Erwin, a retired Henderson County sheriff who supported Cawthorn early in his run. “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.”
Few would complain about that, it seems.
(Via The Washington Post)