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Scandal-plagued North Carolina U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn goes down to primary defeat
Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Budd will face Democrat Cheri Beasley in key fall U.S. Senate race
RALEIGH (CFP) – Republican voters in Western North Carolina brought the political career of scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn crashing down in Tuesday’s primary, while voters statewide set up a fall U.S. Senate contest between Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and Democrat Cheri Beasley.
North Carolina U.S. Senate nominees Ted Budd and Cheri Beasley
Budd, endorsed by Donald Trump, took 59% to win the GOP primary, ahead of former governor Pat McCrory at 24% and former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker at 9%.
In November, he’ll face Beasley, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court who easily won her party’s nomination.
North Carolina is considered one of the Democrats’ prime pick-up opportunities in the fall, which will make the likely race between Budd and Beasley a high-decibel, high-spending affair that gets outsized national attention.
In the state’s 11th U.S. House district, which takes in 15 counties in the western end of the state, Cawthorn – elected to office in 2020 at just 25 – was defeated by State Senator Chuck Edwards of Hendersonville, who had the backing of state GOP leaders.
Edwards took 34% to 32% for Cawthorn, who conceded the race trailing by about 1,500 votes.
Cawthorn — once seen as a rising star in the MAGA wing of the GOP — has been enmeshed in a bevy of controversy and questionable behavior: He was caught twice trying to take a gun through airport security, cited twice for driving with a revoked license, and infuriated colleagues by musing in a podcast that he had been invited to orgies and witnessed cocaine use.
He also raised eyebrows by dismissing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “thug” and has been featured in a photo wearing women’s lingerie and in a video naked in bed with a male friend.
He also made a political blunder by abandoning the 11th District to run in a neighboring district, then reversing course after a state court drew a new map that obliterated his new district.
Trump endorsed Cawthorn and urged voters on the eve of the primary to give him another chance, though the former president conceded Cawthorn had made “some foolish mistakes.”
In other primary contests, American Idol finalist Clay Aiken lost in his second run for the U.S. House, while former Republican U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers’s comeback bid was thwarted by Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political newcomer and former college football star who appears on his way to riding a Trump endorsement to Washington.
Here is a look at other races of note on Tuesday’s ballot:
1st District: Democratic State Senator Don Davis won his party’s nomination for this open seat over former State Senator Erica Smith, who got out of the U.S. Senate race to run here instead. He will face Republican Sandy Smith, a farmer and businesswoman from Nash County, who had a narrow win in the GOP primary.
4th District: Democratic State Senator Valerie Foushee from Chapel Hill cruised to an easy primary win over Nida Allam, the first Muslim woman to win political office in North Carolina, and Aiken. She will favored in the fall in this heavily Democratic district.
6th District: Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning is trying to hang on to this seat, which became more Republican under the final court-drawn map. She will face Republican Christian Castelli, a businessman and former U.S. Army Special Forces officer from Randolph County.
13th District: Armed with Trump’s endorsement, Hines, a 26-year-old political newcomer and former college football star who did not live in the district before running here, avoided a runoff in this newly configured, Republican-leaning district, centered in suburban Raleigh. Among the candidates he defeated was Ellmers, who was trying to make a comeback after losing a Republican primary for her seat in 2016.
14th District: The contest in this newly configured swing district in metro will be between Democratic State Senator Jeff Jackson, who exited the U.S. Senate race to run here and Pat Harrington, a Green Beret and firearms dealer.
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U.S. Senate race, Madison Cawthorn’s fate on ballot Tuesday in North Carolina primary
Donald Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Ted Budd favorite for GOP nod in Senate primary
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
RALEIGH (CFP) — Voters across North Carolina will pick their nominees Tuesday for a pivotal U.S. Senate race that could determine party control, and voters in the western panhandle will decide if Republican U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s political career gets derailed after a string of controversies and bad headlines.
U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn faces stiff primary challenge Tuesday
Nominees will also be selected for U.S. House seats being contested under new maps. Three open seats have drawn crowded fields, which include American Idol finalist Clay Aiken – making his second run for Congress — and former Republican U.S. Rep. Renee Elmers, who is trying to make a comeback after losing her seat in 2016.
Local and legislative seats are also up Tuesday; statewide offices are not on the ballot this year.
Polls for in-person voting open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.
The Senate race features a heated 14-candidate Republican contest expected to come down to a race between U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker and former governor Pat McCrory. The incumbent, Republican U.S. Senator Richard Burr, is retiring.
Budd has been vocally backed by Donald Trump, who came to the Tar Heel State to campaign for him. Under state law, he only needs 30% of the vote to avoid a runoff, and recent polling indicates he’s likely to clear that threshold.
Eleven Democrats are running for their party’s nomination. Former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley – who has raised nearly $10 million for the race – is the prohibitive favorite.
North Carolina is considered as one of the Democrats’ prime pick-up opportunities in the fall, which will make the likely race between Budd and Beasley a high-decibel, high-spending affair that gets outsized national attention.
In the state’s 11th U.S. House district, which takes in 15 counties in the western end of the state, Cawthorn – elected to office in 2020 at just 25 — is battling for his political life against seven Republican challengers and the active opposition of state GOP leaders, including U.S. Senator Thom Tillis.
Cawthorn has been enmeshed in a bevy of controversy and questionable behavior: He was caught twice trying to take a gun through airport security, cited twice for driving with a revoked license, and infurated colleagues by musing in a podcast that he had been invited to orgies and witnessed cocaine use.
He also raised eyebrows by dismissing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “thug” and has been featured in a photo wearing women’s lingerie and in a video naked in bed with a male friend.
He also made a political blunder by abandoning the 11th District to run in a neighboring district, then reversing course after a state court drew a new map that obliterated his new district.
However, Cawthorn has strong name recognition, a fervent following in the MAGA base and, perhaps most importantly, the backing of Trump – which could be enough to clear the 30% threshold and avoid a runoff.
His chief Republican competitors are State Senator Chuck Edwards of Hendersonville and Michelle Woodhouse, the Republican party chair in the district.
Here is a look at some other U.S. House races on the ballot Tuesday.
1st District: Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield gave up this seat in eastern North Carolina after Republican state legislators made the seat more Republican, setting off a scramble in both parties. Although the state Supreme Court later reserved some of those changes, there are still four Democrats and eight Republicans in the race.
Among the Democrats are State Senator Don Davis and former State Senator Erica Smith, who got out of the U.S. Senate race to run here instead. On the Republican side, Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson and Sandy Smith, a farmer and businesswoman from Nash County, have both raised more than $1 million for the race.
4th District: Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. David Price is retiring in this district, which includes Durham and Chapel Hill, drawing a field of eight Democrats to succeed him, including Aiken, who contested a Raleigh-area district in 2014. Leading the field are State Senator Valerie Foushee from Chapel Hill and Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, the first Muslim woman to win political office in North Carolina.
6th District: Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning is trying to hang on to this seat, which became more Republican under the final court-drawn map. Seven Republicans are vying to take her on; the GOP fundraising leader is Christian Castelli, a businessman and former U.S. Army Special Forces officer from Randolph County.
13th District: This newly configured, Republican-leaning district, centered in suburban Raleigh, has drawn eight Republicans, including Ellmers, and five Democrats. Trump waded into this district to endorse Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political newcomer and former college football star who did not live in the district before running here, a move that angered local Republicans.
14th District: This newly configured swing district in metro Charlotte drew two challengers from each party. Democratic State Senator Jeff Jackson exited the U.S. Senate race to run here and is likely to face Republican Pat Harrington, a Green Beret and firearms dealer.
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North Carolina Supreme Court strikes down Republican-drawn U.S. House, legislative maps
Court says politically gerrymandered maps violate state constitution, orders legislators to try again
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
RALEIGH (CFP) – North Carolina’s Supreme Court has struck down political maps drawn by Republican legislators to maximize their political advantage over the next decade, a victory for Democrats in one of the country’s most evenly divided swing states.
In a February 4 decision, the high court, which has a 4-to-3 Democratic majority, said maps drawn for U.S. House seats and state legislative districts were gerrymandered for political reasons in violation of the state constitution.
The court gave legislators just two weeks, until February 18, to redraw the maps, or a lower court will take over the process. It did not delay the scheduled May 17 primary but said that election must use the new maps.
“Achieving partisan advantage incommensurate with a political party’s level of statewide voter support is neither a compelling nor a legitimate governmental interest,” said the majority ruling, penned by Associate Justice Robin Hudson, a Democrat.
The court also ordered legislators to avoid chopping up counties into multiple districts whenever possible – a direct shot at the Republican map, which divided Mecklenberg and Guilford counties into three districts each to dilute the Democratic vote in Charlotte and Greensboro.
In a sharply worded dissent, Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, accused the court’s Democratic majority of usurping the legislature’s power to decide redistricting, suggesting that amounted to “judicial despotism”
“A majority of this court … tosses judicial restraint aside, seizing the opportunity to advance its agenda,” Newby wrote.
North Carolina is one of just six states where judges are elected on a partisan basis.
Although North Carolina is closely competitive between Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. House map drawn by Republican legislators would have likely given the GOP 10 of the state’s 14 seats, compared to the current line-up of eight Republicans and five Democrats. (The state gained a new seat during reapportionment after the 2020 census.)
The legislative maps would also have cemented Republican control of both houses of the legislature over the next decade.
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper did not have the power to veto the maps, drawn by Republicans who control both houses of the legislature, forcing Democrats to go to court to try to reverse them.
The biggest beneficiary of the court’s decision may be freshman Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning, whose district in Greensboro and Winston-Salem was dismembered in the invalidated map. She had not announced her re-election plans, pending resolution of the legal challenge.
Another Democrat, U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield –- a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus who sat on the state Supreme Court before his election to Congress — retired after legislators made his district in rural Eastern North Carolina more competitive by reducing its population of black voters.
Democratic U.S. Rep. David Price from Chapel Hill also announced his retirement, even though his district was left largely intact.
After Republican legislators passed their map, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn announced that he would leave his current district in far Western North Carolina and run instead in a more Republican district just to the east that included suburban Charlotte. Those plans may be upended once the map is redrawn.
Another candidate who may be affected is Clay Aiken, the “American Idol” finalist who announced he would run as a Democrat for Price’s seat. Although the new map is not likely to change that district, had it stood, Aiken may have faced a primary contest against Manning, rather than a easier run for an open seat.
Cooper hailed the court’s decision in a statement, saying “a healthy democracy requires free elections and the NC Supreme Court is right to order a redraw of unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts.”
“More work remains and any legislative redraw must reflect the full intent of this decision,” he said.
But Republican State Senator Ralph Hise, chair of the Senate’s redistricting committee, called the decision a “perverse precedent” that will be “nearly impossible to unwind.”
“Democratic judges, lawyers, and activists have worked in concert to transform the Supreme Court into a policymaking body to impose their political ideas,” Hise said.
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American Idol Clay Aiken denigrates political rival U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers in radio interview
Aiken, defeated by Ellmers in November, calls her a “bitch,” an “idiot,” and an “old snatch” on Howard Stern’s show
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
RALEIGH (CFP) — American Idol Clay Aiken has publicly denigrated Republican U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers, who beat him handily for a North Carolina House seat last November.
U.S. House candidate Clay Aiken
In an April 27 interview with shockjock Howard Stern, Aiken called Ellmers a “bitch” and an “idiot. He also claimed that Ellmers had been “a condescending old snatch” during their campaign debate and that “her self-esteem is just in the floor, under the floor.”
Aiken was on Stern’s show to promote a documentary entitled The Runner-Up, airing on the Esquire Network, which chronicled his unsuccessful attempt to unseat Ellmers.
In response, Ellmer’s office released a statement saying Aiken’s “crude language and disrespectful demeanor towards the congresswoman has proven to the American people why he is a runner-up.”
Aiken, 36, shot to fame in 2003 when he came in second place on American Idol. Last year, he made his first bid for political office in the Tar Heel State’s 2nd District, located in and around Raleigh, trying to become the first openly gay person elected to Congress from the South.
U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers
Ellmers beat him handily, 59 percent to 41 percent, in the GOP-leaning district.
Aiken’s campaign took a bizarre turn last May when the man he narrowly defeated in the Democratic primary, Keith Crisco, died from a fall less than a week after the vote.
Listen to Aiken’s comments on Ellmers, which begin about 1 hour 40 minutes into Stern’s show:
Southern Politics 2014: The Year In Review
2014 was a much better year for Republicans than for reality stars revamped as politicos
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
A congressman man caught kissing. Reality stars trying to remake themselves as politicians. A snowstorm that threatened to torpedo a sitting governor. A top U.S. House leader unceremoniously unseated in a primary. And a flap over a fan during a heated debate.
Those were just some of the strange and unlikely events in Southern politics in 2014, a year that ended with Republicans roaring through the region like Sherman in reverse. Here are some of the memorable moments:
Loose Lips Sink More Than Ships — Republican U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister, a married Christian conservative from northeast Louisiana, was caught on videotape passionately kissing a female staffer who was, ahem, not his wife. He refused to resign but decided not to run for re-election. Then, he changed his mind and ran again, with his wife’s vocal support. But his constituents were less forgiving than the missus, and he finished a distant fourth in the primary.
Snowmageddon — When a January snowstorm paralyzed metro Atlanta, Republican Governor Nathan Deal took the heat for a sluggish state response and his initial attempt to shift the blame elsewhere. But Democratic hopes that this snowy debacle might bury Deal had melted by November, when he was comfortably re-elected.
Taking Aim At Obamacare — Alabama Republican U.S. House candidate Will Brooke posted a YouTube video, entitled “Let’s Do Some Damage,” in which he fired bullets into a copy of the Obamacare bill. The gambit gained him a bit of attention, though, alas, not enough to win the primary in his Birmingham-area district.
Strange Bedfellows — Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani both waded into the Florida governor’s race this year, cutting ads for Democrat Charlie Crist and Republican Rick Scott, respectively. However, their shoes were on the other feet in 2006, when Crist was a Republican (before becoming an independent and then a Democrat.) Back then, it was Crist who enjoyed Giuliani’s support, while Clinton backed his Democratic opponent.
Overheated Debate — Speaking of the Florida governor’s race, a televised debate between Crist and Scott came to an abrupt halt when Crist insisted on putting a small fan at his feet under the podium, in apparent violation of the debate rules. Scott first refused to take the stage until the fan was removed, but he eventually relented — after seven awkward minutes of scrambling by the debate moderators. In the end, Scott won a narrow victory.
Real Mean Politics — Three reality TV stars — American Idol Clay Aiken, former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards and former South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel — all vied for political office this year. But political reality proved harsh, as all three lost badly. However, Aiken is turning his unsuccessful U.S. House campaign in North Carolina into — wait for it — a new reality show.
Biggest Upset — In an outcome that shocked the political world, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia lost his Richmond-area seat to Dave Brat, a little known college professor who ran at Cantor as a Tea Party insurgent. Weep not for Cantor, though. He bounced back with a job on Wall Street.
Worst Campaign — Texas State Senator Wendy Davis tried to parlay her filibuster against a bill restricting abortions in the Lone Star State into the governor’s mansion. But a series of gaffes — including questions about the veracity of her rags-to-riches story as a single trailer-park mom made good — sunk her chances, and she lost by a staggering 20 points.
Weirdest Campaign Appearance — Matt Bevin, who was challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a GOP primary in Kentucky, appeared at a rally hosted by a group that supports legalizing cockfighting. While insisting he didn’t condone cockfighting, Bevin didn’t help himself when he told a radio reporter that the Founder Fathers were “very actively involved” in the blood sport. Perhaps not surprisingly, McConnell won rather handily.
Best Don Quixote Impression — Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel — peeved that he was defeated in a GOP U.S. Senate runoff by crossover votes from Democrats and independents — launched a three-month court fight to overturn the result. Alas, his windmill tilting came to naught, and U.S. Senator Thad Cochran kept the seat.
Best Houdini Impression — Republican U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee faced voters for the first time since lurid details emerged from his bitter 2001 divorce during which he admitted a string of extra-marital affairs and — perhaps even more damaging for an avowed right-to-life lawmaker — encouraging his first wife to have two abortions. However, GOP voters in his district proved surprisingly forgiving, handing DesJarlais a narrow primary victory. He went on to win re-election in November.
If You Can’t Override, Indict — Texas Governor Rick Perry was indicted on charges of abuse of power and coercion over his veto of a funding bill for an Austin prosecutor who refused his demand that she resign after being arrested for driving with a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit. A defiant Perry vowed to fight the charges, noting that in America, “we settle our political differences at the ballot box,” rather than in criminal court.
Double Dipper — Kentucky U.S. Senator Rand Paul announced he would run for re-election in 2016, even as he is also considering a White House bid. One pesky little problem, though: Kentucky law doesn’t allow somebody to be on the ballot for two offices at once. Paul’s supporters are trying to find a way to work around that technicality.
Democrat Dam Breaks in Upper South — While the general election was grim for Democrats across the South, the news was especially depressing in Arkansas and West Virginia, which had been places where the party of Jackson was still competitive. In Arkansas, Republicans took all seven statewide constitutional offices and every congressional seat for the first time since Reconstruction. In West Virginia, the GOP took all three U.S. House seats and captured control of the state legislature for the first time since 1931.
“D” Is The New Scarlet Letter — Three sitting Southern Democratic U.S. senators — Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — all went down to defeat, paving the way for Republicans to take control of the Senate. Republicans also took away an open seat in West Virginia that they hadn’t won since 1942.
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