I’m curious, didn’t the Republican powers-that-be vet him before he was allowed to run for Congress? Couldn’t they foresee trouble down the line?
As I recall, two years ago he ran against the candidate the Republican party wanted. Perhaps that’s why he was targeted this time.
Ayup, that’d do it.
Oh, pop the cork on that champagne! 
Generally speaking, U.S. political parties don’t (and, for that matter, usually can’t) “allow” or “disallow” candidates to run under their banner, though party leadership may make it clear who they are endorsing for a political office.
As Procrustus notes, in the 2020 primary, Cawthorn ran against Lynda Bennett, who was the choice of both Trump and Mark Meadows (who had previously held the seat before retiring from Congress to become Trump’s chief of staff, and who was Cawthorn’s political mentor). But, the initial primary didn’t produce a winner, and Cawthorn beat Bennett in a run-off primary; at that point, he gained the support of local GOP leadership.
The majority of voters in the most rural, conservative parts of his district still voted for him. I don’t think they cared about that at all, if they even knew about it.
He was targeted for the “cocaine and orgies” lie and for applying to run in another district that was rumored to have been tailor-made for our current NC statehouse speaker to run for Congress in. In the end, the district maps were thrown out and redrawn, and he skedaddled back to his original district. But he’d drawn the ire of both the speaker and the head of the state senate by then.
Story on Raw Story today, emphasizing Mad Cawthorn’s record-breaking streak: Youngest evah to be elected to Congress, and youngest evah to get his ass kicked out.
But he still has 7 months left to go, and Republicans might be excused if they’re a bit nervous!
Some of the user comments at the end of the story are a hoot. (Some NSFW too, of course.)
Who beat him? I was not paying attention and, while I am happy Cawthorn is out I worry that his replacement is not better.
Cawthorn will probably get a job at Fox. I hope we have seen the last of him but I suspect not.
He got beaten by a 61-year old somewhat-establishment Republican.
Why, that’s almost old enough to be three Cawthorns!
(How old is that in Scaramuccis?)
I assumed that he was side character from the Netflix House of Cards show that escaped the streaming platform in The Last Action Hero fashion and was assuming that reality was like the absurd plot developments that he experienced in the universe of the show. “You mean Kevin Spacey is a bitter asswipe in reality than Frank Underwood is in the show?”
Stranger
He opted to call himself Madison, which I thought, after it was popularized by the movie Splash, was mostly a girl’s name. NTTAWWT.
Yeah… he did better among voters less likely to have heard about it, and worse among voter who were more likely to have heard about it.
I think so. And this stuff is what they found. But they sat on it as long as they thought he would play ball. When it became clear he was a liability, they pulled this stuff out, timing it perfectly for the primaries.
There were also plenty of people who simply doubled down - lots of quotes in the local paper of people who said they straight up didn’t care what he’d done.
This is what polling looked like in March…
What happened between March and yesterday that drastically changed things?
Did he skip a parade?
Did he consider running in another district when no one knew what the map looked like?
Or was it cocaine orgies, lingerie pics, and naked homoerotic dry humping?
And then there’s the cohort of rural Cawthorn supporters who thought to themselves, “Well, who hasn’t done that ?”
I envy you. He was the rep for my district. I’m going to drive by his campaign HQ this afternoon to see if they’ve started dismantling yet.
Chris Cooper (who is a political science professor at Western Carolina) breaks down the loss:
For all of the scandals, the one that did Cawthorn in was leaving the district & coming back. When he left, Edwards, Burril, Woodhouse & O’Connell weren’t in this race. If he didn’t leave, it’s unlikely they would have gotten in. And he likely would weathered the storm.
Also, one hard-to-assess thing in this state is there are a lot of unaffiliated voters, who can pick whatever primary ballot they want. Those folks are hard to poll.
Chris Cooper’s dumbass theory is completely at odds with the available data. It can be ignored.