(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Fresh from a recent legal victory that likely cleared the way for his unimpeded re-election race, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-NC, touted his dominant primary lead in a poll for North Carolina’s newly redrawn 11th district.
Among seven declared candidates, the 26-year-old incumbent garnered 61.7% support in a GOP ballot test, a full 51.3% ahead of his next competitor.
He also boasted a 79.6% positive approval rating among Republican voters in the district.
“Western North Carolinians don’t want a go along to get along politician in Congress. They want a fighter who will represent their values and advance an America first message in Congress,” Cawthorn told Headline USA in an exclusive statement.
“The outpouring of support that our campaign has received is overwhelming, and I am more determined now than ever to continue working to represent so many incredible patriots in Congress,” he added. “This is just the beginning, the best is yet to come!”
Under a map drawn by the state legislature, Cawthorn initially had planned to run in the 13th district, which would have encompassed much of his old district but essentially split down his property line.
However, a challenge by left-wing activists led the courts to toss the legislature’s map and replace it with one that is ultimately more likely to favor Democrats in the state.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review the case following a 2019 ruling that determined it had no purview for matters involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering.
Despite GOP disadvantages in other parts of the state, Cawthorn’s new district is largely the same as the one he won in 2020 with a solid 54.5% of the vote.
“The counties I had previously lost in redistricting are now included in the new maps that will be used in the 2022 election cycle, and today, I filed to represent them again,” Cawthorn said in a Feb. 28 statement announcing the switch.
With the exception of the far-left city of Asheville, it is a largely rural and conservative region, meaning the eventual winner of the GOP primary will be the likely frontrunner going into November’s general election.
It doesn’t hurt that Cawthorn received an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, who called him “a friend of mine …[with] a very big future.”
However, Cawthorn’s re-election run may not be without its challenges.
The ferocity of the leftist attack against the GOP rising star was apparent in the recent effort to have him disqualified on the basis that he had supported the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising at the US Capitol.
Cawthorn sued the state board of elections, a partisan group appointed by leftist Gov. Roy Cooper that claimed it had the authority to block him from running.
A federal judge last week ruled that even if Cawthorn had participated in a so-called rebellion, the provision of the 14th amendment that the activists had hoped to use to disqualify him had been nullified by Congress’s 1872 Amnesty Act.
Led by Steele Dossier mastermind Marc Elias, activists had hoped to use similar lawsuits nationwide to drain the resources and energy of dozens of conservative stalwarts in Congress, as Democrats panic over an impending red wave in the 2022 midterms.
Prior to that effort, Cawthorn’s embittered 2020 rival, election-loser Moe Davis, announced plans last June to team up with another failed candidate, David Wheeler, to form a “Fire Madison Cawthorn” super-PAC.
The duo claimed to have a $5,000 donation in hand while courting “several other five- and six-figure potential donors.”
They hoped to purchase anti-Cawthorn TV, radio and billboard ads attacking the congressman for “ludicrous” actions such as “not reaching across the aisle to work with any Democrats.”
Despite his campaign’s efforts to tie Cawthorn to everything from neo-Nazis to insurrectionists, Davis himself became notorious for his vicious, highly partisan and divisive tweets, some of which even invoked violence against the wheelchair-bound Cawthorn.
“Screw they go low, we go high bullsh*t,” Davis tweeted on Sept. 11, 2019. “When NC GOP extremists go low, we stomp their scrawny pasty necks with our heels and once you hear the sound of a crisp snap you grind your heel hard and twist it slowly side to side for good measure.”
