Whenever anyone in the media talks about North Carolina Nazi boy Madison Cawthorn, they always get the "orgies and coke" story wrong. Lazy or overworked, even the best MSNBC anchors have changed the narrative. What they say: Cawthorn withdrew the charges. What really happened: Kevin McCarthy claimed Cawthorn withdrew the charges; Cawthorn has been relatively open about branding McCarthy a liar to make the ugly episode go away. It worked; the media and the Democrats have let it slide. Needless to say, if a Democrat had said anything like it, it would be almost as big a story as Hunter Biden's laptop.
Although he tried to escape to an even redder district, Cawthorn's seat isn't flipping blue this cycle. It was R+16 when he was elected and is now R+14. There are no Democrats capable of winning an R+14 seat, especially not in the midst of a red wave... not even if he was videotaped felching his next door neighbor, Patrick McHenry, who was the one badgering him to come to a sex party in the first place.
So... North Carolinians are going to have to clean up this mess through a primary. Democrats shouldn't help, because the likeliest of the 7 Republican challengers to beat him (in a runoff) is state Senator Chuck Edwards, who is a far right crackpot himself. Democrats are better off with a Nazi like Cawthorn because... for Democrats he's a great mascot who perfectly demonstrates what the Republican Party has devolved into.
Still fighting legal efforts under teh 14th Amendment to challenge his eligibility as a candidate after trying to help Trump overthrow the government, he just bumped into another mess that is certainly going to disturb some voters in his district. Yesterday Smokey Mountain News reporter Cory Vallancourt wrote about the plight of a former staffer who's suing Cawthorn. Lisa Wiggins: "What he’s done to me was illegal, morally wrong, you name it, it’s been done."
Wiggins said in the call that she’d advance claims involving violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which entitles eligible employees to “unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons,” according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
In the call Wiggins said she was denied leave when her uncle passed away and her husband had a heart attack during the same week.
Wiggins, 46, said she believed she was Cawthorn’s oldest caseworker and that she’d been given a warning but was fired three days after the warning. It’s not clear what the warning was for.
She also said that Cawthorn had closed all of his district offices except for the Hendersonville office, and was using call forwarding to consolidate constituent service calls.
“I know that because I drove and closed them all,” she said. “He didn’t have enough caseworkers to man them. He didn’t care, he doesn’t care about his constituents. He does not care.”
“If you come from Cherokee County you’re driving five hours to see your congressman,” Wiggins said. “But you can’t see your congressman anyway when you go to the office. There’s no way you can get a meeting with him unless he’s trying to pull some votes and that’s about the only way.”
Wiggins went on to make a number of other claims against her former employer, including more liquor bottles in the Hendersonville office than water bottles, and that she hadn’t seen the congressman she worked for since October.
She explained that she didn’t believe all of the sexual assault or harassment allegations against Cawthorn were true, but that she does believe some of them, including ones from his brief stint at Patrick Henry College, are true. No charges or suits have been filed against Cawthorn in regards to any of those claims.
“As far as the candidate himself, I mean, he’s just a bad person. He’s a habitual liar and he’s going to say and do anything he can to your face but behind your back he’s completely opposite,” she said. “There’s some good stories I have-- a lot of good stories.”
Cawthorn is currently facing seven other Republican challengers in the state’s May 17 Primary Election. Wiggins, a supporter of retired Army Col. Rod Honeycutt, said she hoped Cawthorn would not reach the 30% (plus one vote) threshold to avoid a runoff and proceed directly to the General Election in November.
“The main goal here is that he does not get that 30 plus 1 percent,” she said. “I don’t feel like he’s gonna get it. I just don’t feel like he’s gonna run away with it on May 17.”
The Fire Madison Cawthorn PAC endorsed another Cawthorn challenger, Republican Wendy Nevarez, and has encouraged Democrats to re-register as unaffiliated in advance of the April 22 deadline to vote against Cawthorn in the Republican Primary Election.
“The ultimate goal of course is to get him out,” Wiggins said. “I’m working harder here than I did for his campaign two years ago, and I mean, I worked really hard two years ago.”
Any work-related complaint from Wiggins would be handled by the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, according to OCWR Executive Assistant Glenda DuPree.
When reached by phone earlier today, DuPree also said that if such a complaint were filed, it would be confidential, and that the OCWR could not even confirm or deny the existence of such a complaint.
“People need to know how this man really is,” Wiggins said. “He’s still got a lot of people fooled.”
