Moe Davis Drops Out

 

Moe Davis

And he broke some furniture as he exited.

In a wickedly ironic post on Facebook at 11:29 last Saturday night, Democratic primary candidate for the NC 11 seat, Col. Moe Davis, gave up his candidacy for Congress: "Tonight, I concede to John Ager."

John Ager? Davis was supposedly running next March in the primary against Jamie Ager, John's son, but Davis had an important point to make: That Jamie is nothing but a nepo baby of Western North Carolina Democratic royalty, a descendant of the late Jamie Clark, who founded Hickory Nut Gap Farms near Fairview in Buncombe County, very near the Henderson County Line, and who served a few terms in both the North Carolina General Assembly and in the US Congress. Jamie Clark begot through his daughter a grandson, John Ager (served four terms in the NCHouse), whom Moe Davis was supposedly conceding to, and who begot Jamie Ager (running for the US Congress now) and Eric Ager (serving in the NCHouse now). A genuine dynasty, but what does that matter if Jamie Ager can win? I like his chances.

But Moe Davis's point is logical, and Jamie Ager's entry into the race does look an awful lot like a coronation -- especially if you ignore the respect that family has earned in a wide neighborhood in both Buncombe and Henderson and if you also discount the recruitment efforts of high-ranking Democratic Party officials in those two counties who wanted Jamie Ager simply because they thought he had a legitimate shot at unseating fast-food purveyor Chuck Edwards. After Moe Davis's failed bid to take the seat in 2020, his relationship with the Party took a nosedive, and the style and substance of his midnight Facebook post tells you a great deal about why.

It's a shame, too. But when the fighting spirit I admire in any Democrat becomes a habit of tone-deafness and hurtful back-biting, the base is gonna skedaddle from you, because that don't play well in Western North Carolina.

Jamie Ager -- Strong Arms

As a first-time candidate, Ager needs a primary. If he can’t get through it, he shouldn’t be the nominee, but if he does, he’ll get the practice he needs to face Edwards.

--Thomas Mills

Jamie Ager

Thomas Mills wrote yesterday that the Democratic primary in CD 11 will be the race to watch. Jamie Ager, whom I wrote about the other day based on a lengthy profile piece on him by Cory Vaillancourt, has suddenly emerged as campaign royalty and the frontrunner over main competitor Moe Davis (there are some other also-rans). I started writing about Moe Davis during his first run for Congress in the 11th District in 2020 (also contributed to his campaign). I liked Moe Davis's pugnacious spirit and his willingness to call a spade by its common name. He was a fighter with a career behind him of prosecuting terrorists and of pushing back when higher ups tried to interfere with his independence.

Davis turned that fighting spirit into a political brand when he teamed up with another pugnacious Democrat, David Wheeler, who once upon a time not long ago (2018) mounted a campaign against Ralph Hise for the NC Senate. Moe Davis and David Wheeler roll together, or at least in tandum. Wheeler specializes in raising instant dust, like when he invaded the premises of the notorious cult church Word of Faith in Rutherford County with the suggestion that Hise had improperly enabled its unconscionable power in the local ecosystem, and Wheeler went on to found American Muckrakers PAC dedicated primarily to publishing every piece of available dirt on snot-nosed Madison Cawthorn, the former congressman from CD11. Moe Davis was very much a part of that PAC's activities and its benefactor, as he was running against Cawthorn, and he had no qualms about going negative. (Davis lost the election to Cawthorn in 2020 by 12 points). Cawthorn then went down in the 2022 Republican primary, and the Wheeler-Davis vendetta was likely a factor in his crash. Wheeler subsequently turned his muckraking on Colorado's Lauren Boebert and ended up suing her for defamation. That case wound up in a Watauga County courtroom with local Republican lawyer Nathan Miller representing Boebert. Wheeler's suit got tossed without prejudice for being filed in western North Carolina instead of in Colorado.

More recently, Wheeler made himself a pariah among many Democrats for pursuing a Democratic primary run for Commissioner of Insurance against Natasha Marcus, who had lost her NC Senate seat to gerrymandering and whom Gov. Cooper had anointed to run for the Council of State seat. Wheeler lost the primary and Marcus lost the fall election.

Wheeler has made himself into a sort of professional trouble-maker who seems to enjoy smashing the furniture just for the sound of smashing furniture. There's definitely a place for professional trouble-makers, especially in the Age of Trump, but Wheeler's arrogance and obnoxiousness -- especially when those character traits are aimed at fellow Democrats -- can get exhausting. That oppositional style is crude ore, unrefined, especially when contrasted with the satiric incisiveness of a Gavin Newsom.

David Wheeler and Moe Davis are now teamed up for a weekly podcast, MUCK YOU! (with all caps and the exclamation point) in which they indulge their instincts and druthers and have guests on to discuss the times. 

All of that just to say that Jamie Ager brings a clear contrast to the Wheeler-Davis manner. He projects the kind of calm thoughtfulness and consideration that comes from years of navigating among fellow farmers in a culture that values community connections and non-confrontation. He strikes me as an honest man with Democratic instincts. He won't insult his critics, and he might just win one or two over to his side. Reticence doesn't have to signal weakness. The bottomline: He fits the 11th Congressional District, while it's been pretty well demonstrated that the Wheeler-Davis style doesn't. 

Jamie Ager Announces for Congress in CD11

 

Photo Cory Vaillancourt

Reading this morning in the Smoky Mountain News about Jamie Ager, who announced he's running in the 11th Congressional District Democratic primary next March, setting up what may be a big battle for the nomination with Moe Davis, who ran for the seat in 2020 and is running again, about whom I've spilled a good deal of digital ink and to whom I've contributed campaign donations in the past. Moe Davis comes on hot where Jamie Ager is cooler. Ager told Cory Vaillancourt that he's more of a "happy warrior." So this will be a primary about political style as well as personal roots. Jamie Ager comes from Democratic Party nobility in Buncombe County; Moe Davis earned his spurs as a no-nonsense and morally upright member of the Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps, prosecuting terrorists at Guantanamo (while bravely opposing higher-ups over water-boarding). Davis is a relative newcomer to the 11th District (though he's a native of Shelby). His abrasiveness in 2020 ruffled a few feathers among establishment Democrats.

Jamie Ager is the grandson of Jamie Clarke (James McClure Clarke), famous for trading the 11th CD seat back and forth with Republican Bill Hendon in the 1980s. Both Ager's father John and brother Eric either served in the past (John) or is now serving (Eric) in the NC House. In other words, Jamie Ager comes from a family steeped in politics who seem to know how to do it.

Grandfather Clarke started the Hickory Nut Gap Farm, which specialized in dairy and apples. Jamie his grandson and now candidate for office runs the operation and has drawn praise for his "regenerative agriculture." He's 47. He earned a degree in environmental studies and sustainable agriculture from Warren Wilson College. The farm now encompasses some 250 acres of both family and leased land. Ager raises beef cattle, chickens, turkeys, and pigs — "all pasture-raised and hormone-free, using rotational grazing to promote soil health and carbon sequestration." The operation requires another 25 hired employees.

Ager is politically progressive but also practical-minded, as we say in the country. “My family’s legacy is kind of built around being environmentalists, which I 100% am," Jamie told Vaillancourt, "but I remember as a kid seeing some of this regulatory stuff come through, and when it hits the ground, it’s often kind of slightly ridiculous,” he said. Regulations are important for changing behavior, but they have to make sense to be effective (not to mention being accepted by the public as worth the hassle).

He believes entrepreneurship is the key to creating a resilient agricultural system and wants to see federal policy shift from incentivizing the cheapest food possible to rewarding sustainable, soil-friendly practices. He’s also concerned about the loss of farmland in North Carolina — the state was recently ranked second in the nation for farmland loss, behind Texas — and supports conservation easements and smarter development to preserve agricultural land for future generations.

Ager has sharp assessments of the incumbent congressman, fast-food-king Chuck Edwards, especially disaffection for Edwards' performance following Hurricane Helene. Two months after Helene, then-Gov. Roy Cooper and a delegation traveled to the White House with a $25 billion request toward an estimated $60 billion in damage. Rep. Edwards, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said he authored the relief bill that ultimately passed, but out of more than $100 billion in the bill, North Carolina has gotten scant and may get no more than $9 billion. “That’s frustrating, yeah, the fact that Chuck Edwards said we’re going to get all this money, and [he] actually sits in roles that can help facilitate getting that money, and then not actually being clear about what’s going on -- that’s a leadership problem,” Ager said.

While in Congress, Edwards has gone along with Republican budgeting and program-gutting, which has allowed maintenance to suffer in national parks like the Great Smoky Mountains. “It’s sort of this classic Republican move to defund things and then point out that they’re not operating well and to me, that’s just baloney,” Ager said. Congressman Edwards' cure is to start charging visitors to park. And when DOGE shut down the Social Security office in Edwards' district in Franklin, the congressman did nothing to protest the closure. 

When asked what's the matter with the Democratic Party, especially in a mainly rural district with a R+5 rating, Ager said, “There’s a level of condescension that comes out of urban areas for rural people,” he said. “That pisses me off.”

NOTE

There are at least two other declared Democratic candidates in CD11's congressional primary, but neither appears to have much of a base for competing credibly with Moe Davis or Jamie Ager.

The Return of Col. Moe Davis

 

In 2020, retired Air Force Col. Morris "Moe" Davis attracted a good deal of attention running in the Democratic primary for the 11th Congressional District and then in the fall election that year against that vivid train wreck, Madison Cawthorn. Cawthorn won the race by 12 points, but Davis brought some Democratic heat and raised a respectable $2.5 million for his campaign.

He says he's back for 2026, running for the same seat now occupied by Chuck Edwards, the former state senator who ousted Cawthorn in the 2022 Republican primary.

Davis ran a combative (some nervous 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.) 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 hard-nose with a spine. 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 was a "risk" candidate in 2020, at a time when too many Democrats wanted "safe." But times have changed, and more Democrats are in a fighting mood and want their candidates served raw. Cory Vaillancourt points out that in 2020 Davis actually polled best in the rural counties of CD11. And the incumbent looks weakened after Hurricane Helene ravaged his district, and the Trump admin hasn't done much to bolster Edwards' popularity. Vaillancourt:

Edwards has increasingly come under scrutiny for his performance while in office, most notably in failing to acquire the $60 billion North Carolina says it needs to recover from Hurricane Helene. A bill Edwards claims he authored last December will instead deliver between $9 billion and $17 billion; however, a Smoky Mountain News investigation in March revealed that most local governments hadn’t yet received any money from the federal government six months after the storm.

In a March 13 town hall, Edwards faced fierce opposition. During his speech to delegates at the NC-11 GOP convention on April 26, Edwards touted his proximity to Trump on nearly every issue, claimed “we’re winning” and mocked Democrats.

I'm up for a Moe Davis/Chuck Edwards contest.

 

Is Katie Dean Rising in the DemPrimary for CD11?

 

I've had kind of a crush on Katie Dean since I first watched her campaign video (YouTube), and not the kind of crush old white men are known for, but a political crush, because I thought she "fit" the 11th Congressional District better than the other candidates and that her candidacy could catch fire and roll over all expectations and win.

I wanted to interview her a month ago and proposed an email exchange, but I never heard back from her. Either the message didn't get through, or my being cut out of the 11th CD -- after being led astray into false hope by a map that drew Watauga into Maddy Cawthorn's district -- so my opinion didn't matter any more. Plus who the hell is this guy at WataugaWatch anyway?

I wanted to probe Dean's working-class perspective, what her knee-jerks sound like, and whether there was any good reason I couldn't support her as a "moderate" Democrat. I've done it before, plenty. Though I like radicals, I'll vote for any Democrat over most Republicans because party does mean something most of the time. The Republican Party is a horror show. The Democratic Party is a trainwreck -- going off the rails trying to accomplish something idealistic. Take your pick. I have.

Anyway, and though I can't vote for Katie Dean or anyone else in the 11th, I'm watching her apparent rise (maybe?). People I respect and who have run as Democrats for public office have endorsed Dean -- Moe Davis, who ran for the 11th in 2020 (I contributed to his campaign) and David Wheeler who ran for the NC Senate in 2018 against mastodon Ralph Hise and wasn't afraid to take a lance to that immense mammal. Wheeler lost. But he has some street-fighter in him, and so does Moe Davis, and I approve of that. Together Davis and Wheeler have come out strong for Katie Dean under the aegis of FireMadison.com, a social media gadfly that has never for a second let up on Cawthorn.

Davis and Wheeler make the argument that Heath Shuler ought to have taught us something, for Heath Shuler was the last Democrat to win the district and he was a moderate notorious moderate with a conservative streak that outraged the activists in Asheville. Outraged me too. But he was better than Mark Meadows turned out to be, so party does matter and I ain't no purist.

Katie Dean is the only working-class gal running, with auto grease under her fingertips -- owns a successful auto repair business, can put a timing belt on a GMC. It's that and the obvious intelligence of an accomplished woman who studied how to design municipal infrastructure and has a degree in environmental engineering and who once declined anesthetic for repairing a broken collar bone because she couldn't afford insurance -- all that would make me vote for her too.

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.

The Youngest Member of Congress Reveals His Character

 

Newly elected NC-11 Congressman Madison Cawthorn spoke at the Ellipse rally of Trumpists last Wednesday. Cawthorn said in part: “The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans, hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice. Make no mistake about it, they do not want you to be heard. But my friends, when I look out into this crowd, I can confidently say, this crowd has the voice of lions. There is a new Republican Party on the rise that will represent this country, that will go and fight in Washington, D.C.”

Henderson County Sheriff George Erwin, who had worked hard for Cawthorn's election, couldn't stand it. He said about Cawthorn's speech, “Words mean things. You can inflame a group and you can calm a group by the words you used. To me, he inflamed,” Erwin said. “.... You rile people up and then afterwards, you’re going to say, ‘Well, this is appalling. This is appalling and I back the blue.’ No, you don’t. You fired these people up and the first line of defense was law enforcement. People are dead. You can’t take that back.”

Whoa.

Sure enough, Cawthorn waited until the next day to tweet his disgust with the insurrectionists -- "it wasn’t patriotism it was thuggery.” And then he told a WLOS reporter that he didn't feel any responsibility for what happened. No responsibility. "I'm not responsible at all." That's it, that's the same Trumpist inability to see self, to see clearly what you did and to know it for what it was, and to admit it, at least to yourself.

Sheriff George Erwin

Sheriff Erwin shared his shame that he had worked so diligently to get that young man elected: “This is all on me. Calling all these people, getting them to endorse, introducing him to county commissioners, law enforcement officials. That is all on me. I’m a big boy. I’ll take my punishment. I am not happy with what I’m seeing. I think this is just going to be the tip of the iceberg. I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”

Indeed, there's a Cawthorn contrail going all the way back to election night -- "Cry more lib" -- as he plays to a national hardcore audience. He wants to be their new star. Speaking at the Republican National Convention went to his head, and now he's all about the tough guy act. On Dec. 21, at a speech before the young conservative group Turning Point USA, Cawthorn said that if other Republicans were not on the record “calling for fair, free and just elections” he would come to their districts and fund primary opponents. Call your congressman and feel free, you can lightly threaten them and say, you know what, if you don’t start supporting election integrity, I’m coming after you, Madison Cawthorn is coming after you, everybody’s coming after you,” Cawthorn told the group.

His character comes out in other ways, too: "Erwin said Cawthorn’s hiring and his treatment of people in the office turned him off, as did the new congressman’s seeming priority for a national spotlight over district concerns."

The sheriff isn't the only Republican in the 11th District to speak out against Cawthorn. Eddie Harwood, a Buncombe County conservative, posted this on Facebook: “But after his role in inciting this mob violence we saw at the Capitol, my worst fears about his immaturity and willingness to pander to the worst instincts of the right-wing fringe were realized,” Harwood wrote. “Make no mistake: There is blood on his hands. He played a role in encouraging the violence and attack on our democracy, going to get his picture taken and trying to get on the right-wing news by whipping up the crowd that attacked our democracy and our constitutional process. It was disgusting.”

Whoa, again. (Harwood's full post is a doozy. You should read it.)

The Trumpists probably outnumber the Sheriff Erwins and the Eddie Harwoods of the 11th District, and the Trumpists in the 11th District are still jazzed by their RINO-hunting last week and aren't about to let anything bad (or even "adult") happen to Madison Cawthorn. Consider the threatening phone call to the Haywood County Democratic Party: "Are you the fuckers that are calling for Madison Cawthorn to resign? We're coming after you." Then a brick went through their HDQs window.

That's the situation in the 11th District. That's the shape of the Republican Party. Cawthorn is probably going to be their burden until 2022, when the potency of Trump's bullying may be gone. We'd love to see Col. Moe Davis run for that seat again.

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article248418675.html#storylink=cpy

Does Madison Cawthorn Think He's Cute?

 

Madison Cawthorn, the 25-year-old Henderson County Republican who induced a widespread media swoon by winning the Republican primary for Congress in the NC-11, is not the first American politician to base his electoral prospects pretty much exclusively on his looks, nor will he be the last. He's very aware that he's got head-turning handsomeness on his side. He says in one video I've seen that he used to be 6'3" tall before his automobile crash -- "I stood out," he said. Explains a little the air of privilege that surrounds him, the expectation, despite a tragic car crash, that you can take what you want because. More than one young Christian girl has complained publicly that Cawthorn seemed to think that they owed him some romantic compliance. 

He has said that his big ambition is to be the new young avatar for an aging Republican Party, and he told a reporter that his secret weapon is his "packaging."

“...I believe I can carry the message of conservatism in a way that doesn’t seem so abrasive – that has better packaging, I would say, better messaging.”

I'm a very shallow person, I admit, and judge most candidates first by their surface appearance, but it's a trifle off-putting to hear the candidate admit that the surface is what there is. That he seems to think he can sell sandpaper for Kleenex if he's charming and pretty. Cawthorn is all-American boy with the thousand-watt smile, and his political calculation is this: He's pimping policies that no Millennial would select for themselves unless the salesman is a seducer.

He handles himself pretty well in media interviews. He has his talking points down pat. He's never, or rarely, at a loss for words. He knows his role -- tragic young voice of conservatism struggling to his feet to stand up for freedom despite all odds (while the choir at Fox News faints dead away). But when he gets into policy, he fades quickly into vagueness and illogic. He says he wants his main contribution to be the reform of our health care system, based on his own near-death experiences, but his "reform" looks puddle-deep and contradictory to me -- encouraging more competition among insurance companies is going to make health-care more affordable for the "forgotten people"? The "free market" would have healed his wounds faster? I think a wholly unfettered free market might have discarded both Madison Cawthorn and his hospital bed. 

He has expressed regret that the Republican majorities in Congress did not repeal Obamacare during Trump's first two years, though he, like his hero Trump, does not have a replacement plan. So his "free market" sloganeering looks not only shallow but also quite harmful.

The evident shallowness makes quite credible the creeping fear that he's aligned with white nationalism, with its toxic disdain for weak and unattractive "cucks," though I've never thought his Instagram photos from Berchtesgaden revealed much of anything other than a touristy bragging about places he's been. Time will tell about all of that, if he should actually make it to Congress.

The knock against him that drew blood is that he deliberately misled about the car crash derailing his coming stardom at the Naval Academy. He admitted in a lawsuit deposition that his nomination for the Naval Academy had been rejected before his car crash injuries. He has since claimed in interviews that he never misled anyone about that. I've gone back and watched his introductory video biography on his website -- which is still there -- and there's no doubt that he intended to mislead people about his supposed admission to Annapolis, supposedly ended by the car crash. There's no doubt in my mind.

His Democratic opponent, Moe Davis, an actual distinguished retired member of the military, called Cawthorn's wrapping himself in tragically aborted military glory as "stolen valor." Cawthorn thought perhaps that he could get away with it. After all, he looked the part of a rising Navy midshipman, didn't he?

"Whatever Trump Wants" -- Twitterman Tries To Boost Cawthorn

My favorite thing about the Republican National Convention in Charlotte so far -- it's not their "high-risk" gathering in the same room of some 326 official state delegates (six from each state) with assorted functionaries and facilitators, nor the shocking surprise that they intend to renominate Donald J. Trump this very morning -- it's their decision not to write a party platform for 2020. Well, to be fair, they submitted three words: "whatever Trump wants." 

Dudes! You really want to proclaim your total lack of any anchor holding you to A Rock? You want to announce to the voters that you hold nothing in particular sacred any more? Oh, I know you said the 2016 Platform is readopted for 2020 -- and those are your positions still, thank you very much, and "You may go now" -- depart in peace and don't notice that the old 2016 platform contains statehood for Puerto Rico and that little plank on Crimea that got edited to make it more advantageous for Russia. 

We pretty much knew it all along, that you're a colony now under imperial rule. You used to believe -- stoutly and without equivocation -- in certain tenets of foreign policy, of monetary policy, of personal responsibility. Then Trump arrived. Whatever Trump didn't like, you had to not like too, and how humiliating is that, shedding conviction like a snake sluffs skin?

(The 2020 Platform of the Democratic Party was controversial too because -- as usual -- the Democrats wanted to write too much rather than nothing at all, so there were arguments to the death. Progressives gave up the most. The Biden moderates wouldn't adopt "Medicare for All," but tried to placate the progressives: "We are proud our party welcomes advocates who want to build on and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and those who support a Medicare for All approach." The Bernie Sanders camp was actively involved in drafting the platform, and they decided to lose gracefully, a boon.)

Cawthorn met Trump at a July fundraiser
for the president. Still photo from
video published by The Sun.
Cawthorn is seated to the left.

I know well enough that party platforms are wallpaper and nobody pays them any attention except for partisans like me looking for ammunition. It's still a bad look for a major political party to shirk the responsibility of declaring "These Are the Values We Know, We Know."  

Trump will be in Charlotte at noon to accept the nomination, and then he plans to travel to the 11th Congressional District to give young Madison Cawthorn a boost in his campaign to take Mark Meadows' old seat. Trump's been petting Cawthorn like a new mascot. The lad's been given a speaking slot on the convention program. I look for him to play the victim to get past the awkwardness of being called out publicly in recent days for claiming acceptance to enter the Naval Academy when he was never accepted there, and the serial testimony of several young women who've said that Cawthorn pushed himself on them as God's gift to their gender.

Cawthorn's Democratic rival, Col. Moe Davis, has come on strong and relentlessly. Davis has not been afraid to confront Cawthorn's character flaws, his lack of experience even at holding down a job, his willingness to become a partisan puppet. Cawthorn looks increasingly like a would-be Lothario surfer trying to get next to important people.

Trump's actually landing in the small town of Mills River in Henderson County, where Democrat candidate for the state Senate Brian Caskey is also a town commissioner. Caskey tweeted: "I’ve been invited, since I am the Mayor Pro Tem. If you see me in photos, I’ll be the one wearing the
@JoeBiden mask." I'll be watching Caskey's tweets this afternoon.

New Light on Republican Madison Cawthorn in NC11

I have been a contributor to Democrat Moe Davis's campaign to win Mark Meadows' former US House seat down in the 11th Congressional District (Asheville), so I can be depended on to lap up new in-depth reporting on Moe's 25-year-old Republican opponent, Madison Cawthorn. Cawthorn has wanted to be seen as a generational renewal for an aging Republican Party. At least he campaigned that way against Donald Trump's pick for the job (and Mark Meadows' designated successor), Lynda Bennett, but he's turning out to be just a younger and better-looking Louie Gohmert.

Recent reporting by Tom Fiedler in AVLWatchdog:

Cawthorn told a New York Times interviewer that he was motivated to seek office “because I believe there’s a generational time bomb going off in the Republican Party… I think we’ve not been working hard enough to really reach out and try to appeal to younger voters and we’re starting to see the ramifications of that in national elections.”

But if those words seem to presage a campaign message that would inject a new, younger way of thinking in his party, it isn’t evident in his general election campaign. Since claiming the nomination, Cawthorn has campaigned as a hard-right conservative on policies aligned with the party base of older white voters rather than those expressed by his Gen Z and millennial peers in several polls.

Gone from his website is a boast that, by trouncing primary-rival Lynda Bennett despite her endorsements from President Trump and former incumbent Mark Meadows, he had demonstrated his independence from the Washington, D.C.-based Republican elite.

Newly prominent is the mantra that he is “pro-Trump, pro-life and pro-2nd Amendment.” He populates his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook posts with videos of his Washington, D.C. meetings with Trump and other long-time GOP leaders.

He relishes hanging out with political celebrities. According to reporter Esther Wang ("My Deep Dive Into the Soul of a Model Young Republican Candidate"), he likes hanging out, period. And he looks, according to Wang, like he's at least "white nationalist adjacent."

He's being petted by Trump and Co. as the Next Big Thang, and conservative Republicans in the 11th CD will take to him like debutantes pursuing a contestant on The Bachelor, but thoughtful voters ought to look closely at what they're buying. Cawthorn is unprepared for the job -- shallow, entitled, echoing opinions handed down from the elders he claimed he was transcending.

Col. Moe Davis, the Democrat, is actually massively qualified and working hard for the job that Madison Cawthorn evidently thinks will he handed to him like a participation trophy.

The "Wow" Factor

Two primary candidates in two different states made us go "wow" last night when we checked voting results, one of them here in the 11th Congressional District of North Carolina, a Republican, and the other, a Democrat, in the 5th Congressional District of Virginia.

Madison Cawthorn

Republican Madison Cawthorn buried Lynda Bennett in the 11th CD, 30,444 to 15,806. Bennett had been endorsed by President Trump and by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, but maybe the Republican voters in the 11th District were unamused by the way the former holder of this seat, Rep. Mark Meadows (now of the White House staff) tried to engineer a coronation for Bennett.

Cawthorn is a paraplegic from a catastrophic car accident in 2014 when he was 18 years old. He told the story to the Washington Examiner: He was riding back to the North Carolina mountains from a springbreak beach trip. His friend was driving. Cawthorn was asleep in the front seat. Unfortunately, so was the driver, who hit a concrete barrier going 70 miles an hour: "...the impact snapped [Cawthorn's] spine. The accident burned him, shattered his ankle, broke his pelvis, and cost him a kidney. His internal organs were pushed up into his chest, crushing his lungs. 'Both my lungs collapsed, so I couldn't speak for a very long time,' he said, recalling how he learned to communicate with sign language. Only his head escaped injury. The doctors were amazed he survived."

He says he was left with over $3 million in medical debt, which is why improving the healthcare system has been his number one issue. How he intends to improve the system remains vague, especially as his number two issue is protecting the U.S. from "socialism." He also loves him some Donald Trump, the endorser of Lynda Bennett. (The ironies are piling up!)

He lists his "occupation" as "motivational speaker." If elected, he would be the youngest member of the U.S. Congress, barely old enough to serve, in fact. The Democrat in the race, Moe Davis, has a distinguished background of military and legal service and is about three times older than Cawthorn. I don't know what knowledgeable Democrats are now saying about Davis's chances (Cook Political Report still rates the district "solid Republican" at R+14), but a knowledgeable Republican, Judge Bob Orr, was leading the cheers for Moe Davis on Twitter last night: "Moe Davis ... [is] the clear favorite now. Opponent barely qualifies to run - turns 25 before the election; virtually no work experience; the 11th now has Asheville back in it; and Trump's getting rolled. National $$ headed Moe's way."

Cameron Webb

A little over a week ago I profiled the Democratic primary candidates in the Virginia 5th District. Lord have mercy! Dr. Cameron Webb absolutely buried all three of his rivals:

Updated June 23, 2020100% reporting

Candidate	Votes	Pct.
Cameron Webb	36,232	66.0%
Claire Russo	10,154	18.5
R. D. Huffstetler	5,457	9.9
John Lesinski	3,088	5.6

54,931 votes, 328 of 328 precincts reporting

The district is rated "lean Republican." But it's also an open seat, and the Republican candidate presents as stark a contrast to Webb as you could get. The question remains: Will the 5th CD of Virginia elect a Black man to Congress? We're tingling all over at the prospect.

Un-Trumping North Carolina: Democrat Moe Davis in the 11th Congressional District

I've been an enthusiastic supporter of retired Air Force Colonel Moe Davis who's trying to take the congressional seat in western North Carolina that Trump toady Mark Meadows held until very recently. Davis is perhaps the strongest Democratic Congressional candidate in North Carolina not supported by the Democratic Congressional Candidate Committee (DCCC). The DCCC opted to support Pat Timmons-Goodson in the NC8 as a part of its "Red-to-Blue" campaign, the only Democratic congressional candidate in North Carolina singled out for that kind of financial and tactical support (and I'll be profiling Timmons-Goodson soon).

If anyone can do it on his own steam, it's Moe Davis. He's got a adamantine spine from years of "gut-check moments," when as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay he refused to use evidence obtained from torture during the Bush admin and later came out publicly against the handling of prosecutions by the Obama admin. An equal-opportunity pain in the ass. We like that in the age of Trump.

He's a graduate of AppState and lives in Asheville.

He does not yet know who his Republican opponent will be in November because there's a second runoff primary on the Republican side on June 23rd (postponed from May 12 because of COVID) between Trump-endorsed Lynda Bennett, a middle-aged real estate developer, and upstart Madison Cawthorn, a very young 20-something who has the looks of a movie star. Bennett's baggage includes the ill will generated by Mark Meadows' trying to prearrange her assent to the seat. Bennett is standard-issue Tea Party. Cawthorn represents a much younger, perhaps less encumbered generation. If there's resentment of Bennett for her closeness to Meadows, and Republican backlash against Trump, Cawthorn may be the winner.

Judge Bob Orr

NOTE: Republican Judge Bob Orr, who has a moral compass and who lives now in Asheville, already announced on Twitter that he would be voting in the runoff for Madison Cawthorn, propelled by Trump's endorsement of Bennett, but that he'll be voting for Moe Davis in November.

The Most Interesting Congressional Race in North Carolina

Following Tuesday's primary in North Carolina, two Democratic women in CD 2 and 6 look poised to take seats in the US House that have been held by Republicans. Deborah Ross in CD2 absolutely buried her Democratic primary contenders, taking right at 70% of the total vote against three rivals. In CD6, Democrat Kathy Manning took over 48% of the vote against four rivals, beating her nearest competitor,  Rhonda Foxx, by 33,361 votes. The Cook Partisan Index rates both districts as "Likely Democratic" for 2020.

But I'm looking also 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." He endorses universal health care ("whether it is called Medicare For All or any other name"), access to abortion, legalizing marijuana, and confronting income equality. His website is no-nonsense and straight to the kisser, sort of like his military career. He says this:

He stood up to the Bush Administration on torture. He stood up to the Obama Administration to defend the right to free speech. Moe Davis risked his career to do the right thing for our country. That’s the kind of character he will bring to Washington as Congressman in North Carolina’s 11th District.

He was born and grew up in Shelby, NC, studied criminal justice at AppState, graduated in 1980 and earned his Juris Doctor from NC Central in 1983. He immediately joined the Air Force as a JAG officer where he served with distinction.

(Full disclosure. I contributed a little to Davis during the primary and will likely do so again.)


The Republican Moe Davis Will Be Running Against

Madison Cawthorn

There will be a hot run-off on May 12th between front-running (and Mark Meadows endorsed) Lynda Bennett and the very young Madison Cawthorn (born in 1995). There were a dozen Republicans running in the primary (listed and described here), and most of them are mightily pissed off at how Meadows kept his decision not to run for reelection a secret until the day before the filing period ended and then advantaged his wife's best friend Lynda Bennett for the seat.

On Tuesday, Bennett took 22.72% of the vote to Cawthorn's 20.40%, and Cawthorn has already called for the run-off, drawing endorsements from several other trailing candidates. Cawthorn was quoted in the press:

There’s no doubt in my mind the people of Western North Carolina are sick and tired of watching the politicians [Mark Meadows] trying to force their will upon us and every single vote that was cast against Lynda Bennett was a vote against what Mark Meadows has done. Republicans in the race were furious that Meadows endorsed Bennett, a close friend of him and his wife, after telling other candidates he would not endorse anyone in the primary.

The odds are rarely on the side of second-place finishers in run-offs, but in this case the odds are hard to figure because of anger in the district at Meadows' trying to manipulate the outcome.