Madison Cawthorn Is Finished

 

Otherwise, Trump-endorsed candidates in North Carolina did well, proving once again that the NCGOP is too far gone to save. But Cawthorn's meteoric rise and sudden fall is pretty much complete, though he has months still to spend in office embarrassing himself and the rest of us. 

Cawthorn did crack the magic 30% threshold, taking 31.90% of the vote, but state Senator Chuck Edwards did better with 33.40%. The much-ballyhooed moderate woman Wendy Nevarez, promoted as the antidote to Cawthorn by the Democratic founders of the American Muckrakers PAC, just got 10% and came in 7th of 8 candidates. Maybe she'd like to switch parties to some group where she'd be more appreciated.

On the Democratic side of the 11th CD, Jasmine Beach-Ferrara blew away all competitors, taking almost 60% of the vote in a crowded field. Katie Dean, for whom I felt some enthusiasm, came in second with 25.70% of the total vote.

Flickrs of Democrats Running in the 14th CD Primary in March

 

I'm shopping -- along with most other Democrats and progressive-minded independents -- for the best (winnable) candidate to support in the March 2022 Democratic primary for the Congressional seat in the new District 14. 

I gravitate to video biographies. Tight, condensed, seeringly honest often, sometimes cleverly manipulative (even when it doesn't realize it). I like steely forthrightness but I also don't mind a little manipulation, and let's face it, winning voters over takes a special intelligence for shaping attitudes and expectations. An effective public performance stops time. So I probably make way too many judgments based on appearance (body language, speech, eye contact, the overall narrative), but that's what it's come down to. Assuming all other factors about a candidate's philosophy are basically even, it want to see the pitch. (I'm a shallow person.)

Below is a first collection of candidate videos from the Democratic side of the 14th CD. All were made before the new congressional maps landed (so you'll hear mention of "District 11"), back when we all couldn't wait to run against Madison Cawthorn of lasting memory. But Cawthorn is gone to the new 11th CD. The Republicans will nominate someone else on their side, someone comparably bad probably (in the manner of the new GOP -- tears for Wendy Nevarez!), and with the numbers/demographics tilted in their favor, the Democratic standard-bearer has got to be dynamic. Cawthorn's chosen GOP successor who wins their primary can't just waltz in, especially if they prove uninspiring to the neo-Confederates who loved Madison. 

Some announced Democratic candidates don't (yet) have videos, or I couldn't find them. And very possibly there'll be additional Democrats whom we've not heard of yet filing after Dec. 6th. We'll follow up with additional moving pitchers as they become available and as we approach March 8th.

If you watch at all you should watch to the end of each video. These pieces of art take money and time to produce. That deserves some respect.

Democrats Lining Up For the Opportunity To Beat Madison Cawthorn

 

Madison Cawthorn (R)

This uneducated punk will be up for reelection in 2022 in the NC11. He's made a national spectacle of himself but is also the darling of the Right. He's said his main objective in office is to build a good "comms" operation, meaning he's much more interested in seeing himself in the news than in passing meaningful legislation for his constituents.

So far, three Democrats have declared their intention to compete in the spring 2022 Democratic primary to take on Cawthorn.

Beach-Ferrara

Buncombe County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara was the first Democrat to declare on March 3rd. Beach-Ferrara, who is both a gay woman and a Christian minister as well as the mother of three children, said, “I’m running because Western North Carolina families deserve better than they’re getting from Madison Cawthorn. My faith teaches me that leadership starts with empathy, compassion, and listening and then getting to work to help people. That’s the kind of leadership I want to offer instead of the division and mean-spiritedness we’re getting now. This is going to be a campaign built on bringing people together, finding common ground, organizing everywhere and talking about the issues that actually matter to people’s lives.”

Beach-Ferrara reportedly raised $380K in the first 29 days of her campaign.

Remillard

Democrat Josh Remillard announced his candidacy on March 10th.

A former Army infantryman who served two combat tours in Iraq, Remillard ran previously in 2020 for the NC House Dist. 117, which Republican Tim Moffitt easily won with over 60% of the vote. According to Cory Vaillancourt, Remillard was born in Goldsboro, raised in Wilmington, and was in foster care until the age of four. "After leaving the Army, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from the University of Washington. Remillard’s current occupation is serving as a stay-at-home dad."

“I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and do the hard work of strengthening our economy, fixing a broken health-care system, and improving our kids' education,” he said. “I am running to stop Madison Cawthorn and bring honor back to Congress.

The newest Democrat in the race: Ed Gash, an elementary school principal, a preacher, and a former linebacker at UNC-Chapel Hill.

He was profiled today by Kyle Perrotti:

Gash

Gash was born and raised in Western North Carolina, having graduated from Hendersonville High School in 1988. From there, he went to UNC-Chapel Hill, where he also played outside linebacker. While Gash eventually had the chance to sign with the New England Patriots, the team his brother Sam played for, he decided to go a different direction and get into business.

It wasn’t long before a new venture took him to the Caribbean, where he lived for 14 years training people in different countries to run direct sales operations.

Before long, Gash met Katy, who is from Barbados. The two quickly fell in love and got married a year later in 1996. The two got to travel frequently for work to countries all over the world and even lived in Guyana, the Virgin Islands and St. Lucia.

Eventually, in 2008, the Gashes and their three children moved back to Hendersonville to be closer to his family in the mountains.

“I was away for 20 years, almost to the day,” Gash said.

Gash got right to work in the school system. Beginning as a part-time teaching assistant, he became a math teacher before getting his master’s degree and going into administration. In January 2020, he became the principal at Bruce Drysdale Elementary School, which he himself attended as a child.

Since being back home, Gash also coached girls basketball and served as an assistant coach on the football team until 2014 when he was named Hendersonville’s head coach, making him only the second Black head coach in Western North Carolina since integration. Gash coached until 2016 when he stepped away to go into administration.

Another major part of Gash’s life is his faith, which he said guides every decision. Since 2008, after doing missionary work during his last couple of years in the Caribbean, he’s been the pastor at the nondenominational Speak Life Community Church and is also currently the Hendersonville Police Department’s chaplain.

“It’s the faith that causes me to look at folks that maybe don’t believe what I believe or feel the way I feel with compassion and love and still be able to have a conversation with them,” Gash said.

Gash has long been active in the community, but it wasn’t until recently that he began seeing things through a more political lens. While he and Katy said they don’t consider themselves activists, between the COVID pandemic and racial unrest of the last year, they’ve felt compelled to make their voices heard.

“Something happened over the summer,” Gash said. “It was a paradigm shift, just in my heart, where I felt I had to do something.”

Moe Davis Bows Out in NC11

 

When former Guantanamo prosecutor Col. Moe Davis entered the 2020 congressional race in North Carolina's 11th District, I enthusiastically followed his candidacy because I naively believed that the Blue Wave of 2018 could have a repeat in 2020. (How can you stay political without being stupidly optimistic?) After Davis won the March 2020 Democratic primary, I wrote this about him:

...I'm looking ... to CD11 for my 2020 excitement, even though Cook still considers it "Solid Republican" even with all of Asheville restored to the district after being previously gerrymandered out. I'm looking that way because of the Democrat who won Tuesday's primary against four rival candidates, Moe Davis, who doubled the votes of his nearest second-place contender.

I've been following Davis since he burst out into the public soon after his (admittedly late) filing for the office. Morris "Moe" Davis retired from the US Air Force at the rank of colonel and already had a high pre-candidacy national profile. He served two years as Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay and resigned in protest because his superiors in the Air Force Judiciary and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense overruled his decision to disallow evidence obtained via CIA torture. In resigning his position, Davis declared that he wasn't going to take orders from people who think "waterboarding is A-Okay."

In other words, he's a commendable hard-nose. He's got a clear pattern of courting controversy, or at least not skirting around it when it blocks his path of moral certitude (he said the Supreme Court was "meddling" when it chose to review the Military Commissions Act). He's not afraid to defy authority when he thinks he's right, and you've got to admire his fortitude. He's been on all the broadcast and cable news programs as a recognized expert in national security, especially security from terrorists who he thinks should be prosecuted the fair way and not via the CIA torture wheel, but he's also defended Guantanamo as a "humane" detention center (which makes him suspicious to some liberals).

He's a "risk" candidate at a time when too many Democrats want "safe." ...

Davis ran a combative (some liberals thought too combative) campaign against Cawthorn, highlighting the post-teenager's moral and ethical black holes. Full disclosure: I contributed more than once to Davis's campaign. He lost by 12 points anyway, and now the 11th CD of North Carolina has both the youngest and the rottenest member of Congress representing them in Washington.

Screengrab of Cawthorn,
courtesy of Raw Story

I've followed Davis's Twitter feed since the election, and he sure looked like he was determined to make another run at Cawthorn. Plus he had filed paper showing intent to run with the Federal Elections Commission, but he now says that was just a formality to keep his options open. In a new interview he gave to Raw Story, Davis now says he's out because he doesn't think the district can be won by a Democrat unless and until things change, including financial and tactical support from the national Party (not to forget a redrawing of district lines to make it less conservative -- a forlorn hope).

Davis's assessment about the future winnability of CD 11 pretty well matches up with the Cook Political Report's ranking: "The hardcore that drank the Trump Kool Aid, there's nothing I can do to change their minds," Davis said in a telephone interview. "They didn't care, or I think a lot of folks that would be supporters of him, they're not reading the New York Times or watching CNN."

Davis adds another factor to his decision, a genuine threat of violence: 

Davis said his social media manager recently quit because he was tired of having to wade through death threats, and Davis basically feels the same way.

"I'm not going to risk getting myself killed if there's no realistic shot at winning," he said. "If nothing changes, it's still impossible to win here."

He said he could support the candidacy of Buncombe County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, who announced earlier this week, but he suggested that having a big name in Asheville could actually hurt a Democrat's chances of winning the rest of the district -- which sounds about right. 

I think it's more likely that Madison Cawthorn will be taken out next spring in a Republican primary, at which point the punk can go on to his reward as an on-air personality for right-wing media. They like blonds who can parrot.

 

Buncombe County Commissioner Has Entered the Democratic Primary To Challenge Madison Cawthorn

 

Take a look at this, the announcement video of Buncombe County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, just released this morning:

“I’m running because Western North Carolina families deserve better than they’re getting from Madison Cawthorn. My faith teaches me that leadership starts with empathy, compassion, and listening and then getting to work to help people. That’s the kind of leadership I want to offer instead of the division and mean-spiritedness we’re getting now,” said Beach-Ferrara. “This is going to be a campaign built on bringing people together, finding common ground, organizing everywhere and talking about the issues that actually matter to people’s lives.”

"Some people will say a gay woman who's a Christian minister just can't get elected in the South. Not to mention, she's a Democrat. When I say an insurrectionist who flirts with Nazis, fires up a violent crowd to attack our democracy, well he shouldn't get reelected anywhere," Beach-Ferrara said in the campaign video.

According to Kristy Kepley-Steward, "As a commissioner, Beach-Ferrara has a reputation as being a pragmatic problem-solver who knows how to bring people together to deliver results for working families, working to bridge the commission’s partisan divide to help expand access to early childhood education, tackle the opioid epidemic and keep people safe during the pandemic." The Smoky Mountain News prints additional background on Beach-Ferrara.

Beach-Ferrara will likely face a lively Democratic primary next spring for the privilege of taking on Cawthorn. Col. Moe Davis, who ran a pugnacious race against Cawthorn last fall, raised substantial campaign cash, but lost to Cawthorn by 12 points, filed a statement of candidacy on Feb. 22 but has a statement on his website saying he’s still “exploring” the idea of running again.

Henderson County businessman and Iraq War veteran Josh Remillard has also filed FEC paper to organize a campaign. Remillard was on the 2020 ballot for the 117th House District against a resurrected Tim Moffitt, but Remillard lost by 21 points. According to the Smoky Mountain News, another potential Democratic candidate, Jay Carey, is also exploring a run, "and it's likely he's not the last."

According to Cory Vaillancourt, Cawthorn may have his own Republican primary next spring with "powerful Hendersonville Republican" Chuck Edwards, who was just reelected to the NC Senate from Dist. 48. Apparently, Cawthorn's stepped on his own weenie a few times too many for an establishment Republican like Chuck Edwards.