'His act is wearing thin': North Carolina Republicans gripe about Madison Cawthorn

Rep. Madison Cawthorn is stumbling at home and abroad as his bid to play Republican kingmaker falls flat with voters and alienates colleagues.

The 26-year-old, first-term North Carolina Republican saw both candidates he endorsed in Texas’s March 1 GOP congressional primaries lose — even failing to advance to the May 24 runoff. In his own state, the Republicans with whom Cawthorn serves are smarting from his aborted attempt to switch districts in the wake of decennial reapportionment and what many see as his half-baked hubristic campaign to anoint the GOP nominee in 11 of North Carolina’s 14 newly configured House seats.

“His antics are wearing thin with his colleagues and with Republican voters, though he still has a limited but fiercely loyal following with some activists,” a senior North Carolina Republican said.

Cawthorn has been a popular figure with the conservative grassroots since winning the Republican nomination in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District in June of 2020. He replaced Mark Meadows, who had resigned to become then-President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff. In that primary, Cawthorn defeated the candidate hand-picked by Meadows and endorsed by Trump, but the ambitious Republican quickly embraced the 45th president and affiliated with his wing of the GOP.

The pugnacious Cawthorn is popular with Republican voters in his district, and his endorsement in GOP primaries outside of North Carolina has been coveted. But in the first test of Cawthorn’s coattails, in primaries in Texas’s 3rd and 8th congressional districts, he failed. The candidate he backed in the 8th, Christian Collins, came up short, as did the contender he endorsed in the 3rd, Suzanne Harp — the mother of his congressional office chief of staff.

Those missteps seem unlikely to damage Cawthorn’s reputation with grassroots conservatives nationally. They enjoy his combative tongue-lashing of GOP leaders and other Republicans he brands too “establishment.” But in North Carolina, GOP insiders say Cawthorn’s efforts to play kingmaker and constant threats to campaign against fellow Republicans he deems insufficiently conservative, combined with a litany of personal foibles, are beginning to turn figures across the party against him.

“His act is wearing thin,” a GOP operative with North Carolina ties said, repeating a favorite phrase of Cawthorn’s Republican critics in the Tar Heel State. “North Carolina’s Republican Party has long had a split between [former Sen. Jesse] Helms conservatives and Piedmont moderates. But antipathy toward Cawthorn increasingly unites a lot of them.”

Cawthorn’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. But Doug Heye, a Republican strategist and North Carolina native, questioned whether the congressman would fall out of favor with Republican voters in his district, given the premium the GOP base puts on combativeness and loyalty to Trump. “The accumulation of negative headlines should have taken a toll on Cawthorn by now, but that assumes living in a normal political world,” he said.

On March 3, Cawthorn was pulled over by the North Carolina State Highway Patrol and cited for driving with a revoked license. The congressman was recently pulled over and cited for speeding — twice. On Thursday, video emerged of Cawthorn calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “thug” and claiming the Kyiv government is “incredibly evil.” The congressman’s remarks were widely condemned, including by Cawthorn’s Republican primary challengers and former Gov. Pat McCrory, a 2022 GOP Senate contender.

But what appears to rankle so many North Carolina Republicans the most, what is causing “his act to wear thin,” party operatives in the state say, are two problems in particular: Cawthorn’s initial move to switch districts, later reversed, and his attempt to decide the political fate of the rest of the state’s GOP delegation by fancying himself kingmaker in the 11 House seats drawn to elect Republicans in an earlier version of redistricting.

After reviewing the initial map, Cawthorn declared he would exit his Western North Carolina seat, the proposed new 14th Congressional District anchored in Asheville, and run for reelection in the proposed new 13th District, anchored in Charlotte. Both were drawn to elect Republicans easily, but a district in the Charlotte media market promised more statewide coverage and a better springboard to statewide office.

When the map fell through, Cawthorn went back to a newly configured 11th District and moved to muscle out Michele Woodhouse, the Republican he had endorsed to take his place in the state’s far-western district and personally encouraged to run (Woodhouse has refused to stand down and is among Cawthorn’s primary opponents). Meanwhile, Cawthorn had created a document based on that initial map titled “Cawthorn’s Plan for North Carolina.”

In it, the congressman laid out which districts he wanted incumbent Republicans to run. In open seats, he endorsed. For instance, Cawthorn picked former Rep. Mark Walker for the proposed 7th District even though he is running for Senate. This public presumptuousness infuriated many North Carolina Republicans, including and especially the prominent and more veteran members of the state’s GOP delegation.

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Among them are ninth-term Rep. Virginia Foxx, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee; fifth-term Rep. Richard Hudson, the House Republican Conference secretary, an elected leadership position; and ninth-term Rep. Patrick McHenry, the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee and former chief deputy majority whip.

“Cawthorn is not well regarded with Republicans statewide in North Carolina,” an experienced GOP strategist in the state said. “Many of us think he is an embarrassment to our party and state.”