But there are signs that Cawthorn’s chutzpah is catching up with him. He first shocked his constituents and the North Carolina GOP hierarchy when he unexpectedly announced last November that he would abandon his safe seat in the state’s mountains to run in an even safer seat in the Charlotte suburbs. The move was pure power politics, as it sidelined an intra-party rival, state House Speaker Tim Moore, who was considering a run for the seat. Cawthorn didn’t live in the district or have any connection to it, but he said he would run there to keep “another establishment, go-along-to-get-along Republican” out of Congress. The fact that this move would have given Cawthorn an excuse to run television ads in North Carolina’s largest media market, potentially setting himself up for a future statewide run, was not lost on savvy watchers….
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) said that he’s experienced “the sexual perversion that goes on in Washington.”
Said Cawthorn: “Being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70, and I look at all these people—a lot of them I’ve looked up to all my life, always paid attention to politics—then all of a sudden you get invited to ‘hey, we’re gonna have kind of a sexual get together at one of our homes, you should come.’ Then you realized they’re asking you to come to an orgy.”
Cawthorn also claimed that lawmakers have done cocaine in front of him….
image…Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) in the House chamber on March 1. (Saul Loeb/AP)