Multiple embarrassing traffic stops. A credible accusation of insider trading. Photos of him sporting hoop earrings and a bra. A video of a male staffer’s hand near his crotch. Another video showing him jokingly but nakedly humping the upper body of potentially the same man—his cousin. And possibly more to come.
Few in politics have seen anything like the ever-worsening public relations trainwreck that has consumed the political career of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC). The unrelenting pile-up of damaging stories, insiders say, is the clear handiwork of political players determined to take out the 26-year old MAGA hero in the May 17 primary election.
With a field of hungry Republican primary opponents eyeing the divisive freshman’s seat, the sources of the coordinated stories seem clear: the attacks are coming from inside the house.
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“It’s definitely a hit job that I’m happy to be a party to,” a veteran North Carolina operative involved in the race told The Daily Beast.
“Most of the GOP universe has come around to align against this guy,” he added. “You’re seeing a full-court, state-based, establishment pushback against him. Get this guy out. Take him out. We’re gonna see if we can pull it off in eight days.”
A bit of conspiratorial conventional wisdom has taken hold recently among some on both the right and left: that the knives came out for Cawthorn in March after he alleged that unnamed GOP lawmakers were openly sniffing drugs and hosting orgies.
That may have been the last straw for some. But the reality is Cawthorn has spent the last year making enemies, from Capitol Hill to the corner of North Carolina that he represents. The congressman’s most recent string of unforced errors—from the coke-and-orgy comments to disparaging Ukraine’s president as a “thug”—merely helped to consolidate a powerful coalition of longtime foes and former friends.
The former group—led by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)—has backed state Sen. Chuck Edwards, one of Cawthorn’s leading primary challengers, and has spent heavily on ads damaging the congressman.
But it’s that latter group—his old allies—that turbo-charged the kitchen-sink push to drag down Cawthorn ahead of primary day. Multiple sources deeply involved in the race suspect the most sensitive material was leaked by people formerly close to Cawthorn, and the rumor mill in western North Carolina is buzzing daily with guesses.
The conduit for many of those hits, however, has been no mystery. “Fire Madison,” a political action committee run by two local Democrats, has published and publicized some of the most salacious items about the young congressman.
“We’ve become kind of the dumping ground for info on the guy,” admitted David Wheeler, a former candidate for the state senate who runs much of the day-to-day operation of the Fire Madison PAC. “Obviously, we have a target, we’re not afraid to take him on and put out the information his opponents wouldn’t—or the Democrats wouldn’t.”
That included a video last week, released with many disclaimers and caveats, showing a naked Cawthorn mounting another man in bed and dry-humping his face while making bizarre yelping noises—seemingly as a joke, but bizarre nonetheless. Cawthorn did not deny the video was authentic, but he dismissed it as horseplay, and said his foes were trying to “blackmail” him by publishing it. Few news outlets reported on it. His opponents didn’t even go near it.
In an interview, Wheeler told The Daily Beast that the video arrived, via email, from a man who wanted to remain anonymous as a “former supporter and donor” for Cawthorn.
It was just one of many tips and bits of information that the PAC has received about Cawthorn from various sources. And according to Wheeler, that firehose of oppo includes much more explicit material featuring the congressman—material Wheeler said he could not publish without breaking North Carolina law.
“People think we’re under Kevin McCarthy’s finger, and that he’s telling us what to do because he wants to get back at Madison,” Wheeler said, referencing the House GOP leader who publicly and privately reprimanded Cawthorn after his orgy comments.
“It’s not folks out of Washington that are sending this stuff,” Wheeler maintained. “It’s folks who used to work with him, who were his supporters.”
With less than a week until the primary election, the hits on Cawthorn are expected to keep coming. If he notches less than 30 percent of the vote, the congressman would head to a runoff with the second-place finisher in a field of seven challengers—a scenario that might only intensify the stream of attacks.
But on several other important fronts, Cawthorn isn’t exactly helping his own cause.
For one, his campaign has churned through nearly all of its cash, running on fumes as it heads into the primary home stretch.
The Cawthorn operation currently owes twice as much money as it has in the bank. In the month of April alone, they racked up nearly $250,000 in debt while spending another $216,000. The campaign offset that with only $102,000 in contributions, closing the month with a little more than $137,000 cash on hand.
But the problem isn’t limited to the spending itself. It’s also how he’s spending it.
“It’s a grift and a racket,” one North Carolina GOP strategist told The Daily Beast. Reports of Cawthorn setting up his friends with cushy paychecks have raised eyebrows among Republicans in the state, he said.
The Daily Beast reported last week that Cawthorn appears to have paid his top office and campaign staffer more than the maximum allowable outside income—exceeding that limit by as much as $40,000, while routing tens of thousands of dollars through a shell LLC. The staffer is a twentysomething college friend whose work experience prior to helming a congressional office appears mostly grounded in running a Texas fireworks stand.
Cawthorn has also doled out campaign funds to a number of other friends, while going increasingly light on the details of those payments, a person familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast.
His personal life choices have raised concern among Republicans from ex-President Donald Trump to House leadership to people close to the Cawthorn campaign, especially in the months after the 26-year-old’s brief marriage came to a seemingly abrupt end last year.
Rolling Stone reported on Sunday that Trump is “completely weirded out” by Cawthorn’s behavior. McCarthy said in late March that Cawthorn had lost his confidence as minority leader, and that Cawthorn needed to “turn himself around.”
What exactly that means remains an enigma, but, as with most things involving Madison Cawthorn, there’s clearly plenty of innuendo and anger.
A Cawthorn campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite the drumroll of attacks, the political arms of the national party are largely staying out of the race. Even the Trumpiest lawmakers aren’t opening their checkbooks to support Cawthorn—or appearing anywhere near him.
“MAGA world is keeping their distance,” a strategist told The Daily Beast, noting that party brass is unwilling to place bets ahead of a possible primary nail-biter, especially since the winner will be a strong favorite in the general election in this conservative district.
“They aren’t sure how this is going to play out, and right now they don’t want to put their credibility on the line considering all the baggage Madison has right now,” he said.
In the face of near-daily stories casting doubt on his character and integrity, Cawthorn has fully embraced the Trumpian playbook of dismissing them as products of the “fake news” and attacks from establishment “RINOs.” And like many scandal-plagued Republicans in this era, he has tried to turn his terrible headlines into something that ties him closer to Trump.
“I’ve never seen the Swamp launch such a coordinated attack against any individual in politics except for Donald Trump,” Cawthorn said in a video posted to Twitter last week, in which he bragged that he was so ahead in the polls that he did not need to defend himself but was “honor-bound” to supposedly set the record straight.
Some of Cawthorn’s critics have expressed concern that sympathy for the young congressman is growing among Republican voters. Even some liberal-leaning publications, like Mic, have amplified the suggestion that Cawthorn is being punished because he was telling the truth about rampant drug use and group sex in the old, white confines of the GOP.
Michele Woodhouse, a former chair of the district GOP who is challenging Cawthorn from the Trump lane, said she meets people on the campaign trail who believe there is a “conspiracy” to oust him.
While Woodhouse said the “Raleigh swamp”—typified by Tillis and Edwards—is out to get Cawthorn, she argued the congressman has only himself to blame for many of the scandals dogging him now.
“The left-wing media didn't make Madison Cawthorn drive without a license for three years, or burn through money like a drunken sailor, or give him 18-plus ethics violations,” Woodhouse said. “Western North Carolinians are smart—and there is no conspiracy here. It’s his choices. It’d behoove him to own them.”
Wheeler, who helps run the super PAC that Cawthorn blames for many of the stories that have surfaced, dismissed the idea that there would be any backlash to the relentless attack that they are gleefully carrying out.
“Our perspective is, anybody that believes Madison Cawthorn was the victim here was probably going to vote for him anyway,” Wheeler said.
Some media commentators have questioned the decision to publish the sexually charged Cawthorn videos, pointing to some of the news coverage, which has leaned heavily on the suggestion that the congressman is attracted to or involved with men.
Without any context to explain the most recent video—such as whether Cawthorn was married at the time or even what age he was—it’s trickier to argue what larger point, exactly, is being made by releasing the embarrassing tape to the world.
When asked, Wheeler said it was “easy” to make the decision that releasing the video was in the public’s interest. But he did say that, after getting it, the PAC considered flagging it for the sheriff in Henderson County—Cawthorn’s home county—and decided not to.
They also waited to see if other media outlets would report the video once it had circulated, but after some time, “we could tell nobody was going to take it,” Wheeler said. At that point, they felt they had “no choice” but to release it, albeit with a long list of caveats.
The PAC’s site, Wheeler said, saw its traffic skyrocket from an average of 2,000-3,000 viewers to 370,000 viewers of that video alone—which nearly crashed the site.
He argued that despite the lack of knowledge around the circumstances of the video, his conduct spoke for itself and showed he is a hypocrite about the buttoned-down, socially conservative ideals he espouses in public.
“Our focus is getting the guy fired. Some of what we do is pleasant, and readable, some of what we do is a little nasty, and not everyone’s cup of tea,” Wheeler said. “But it’s all facts.”
