NC voters can’t challenge Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s eligibility for office, judge rules
U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a Republican from Hendersonville, won a major court victory Friday when a federal judge ruled that voters shouldn’t be allowed to try to have him ruled ineligible to run for office.
A group of voters from Cawthorn’s district in Western North Carolina had filed a challenge with the State Board of Elections, claiming that Cawthorn should be banned from the ballot altogether. They cited his actions supporting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress. Cawthorn has denied their allegations that he may have helped plan the attack.
Those who took over the Capitol were trying to pressure members of Congress into voting to overturn the 2020 election results and keep Republican President Donald Trump in office, even though he lost the election to Democratic President Joe Biden.
Cawthorn’s opponents say the Jan. 6 attack was an attempted insurrection — a word that top GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has also used to describe that day that resulted in several deaths and injuries. The opponents say the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans those who have engaged in insurrection against the government from holding federal office like a seat in Congress.
But Cawthorn had argued that a pro-Confederate law passed during Reconstruction allowed many ex-insurrectionists to run for office, despite the 14th Amendment, and that it should apply to him too. Federal district court judge Richard Myers, a Trump appointee, agreed and ruled in Cawthorn’s favor.
“The left’s lawfare tactics have failed,” Cawthorn wrote in a tweet about the ruling. “On to re-election!”
Cawthorn’s challengers immediately said the state should appeal the ruling. The challengers themselves were not allowed to make arguments in the case. That was limited to the State Board of Elections, whose spokesman Pat Gannon told The News & Observer Friday that the board and its lawyers were reviewing their options.
“The ruling must be reversed on appeal, and the right of voters to bring this challenge to Cawthorn’s eligibility must be preserved,” said Ron Fein, the legal director of a group that has been representing the voters in the case, called Free Speech For People.
The News & Observer previously reported that national legal experts say that even if the challengers ultimately lost their case at the elections board, they could still get something of a win by forcing Cawthorn to testify under oath about what actions he did or didn’t take before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack.
But Myers’ ruling Friday would prevent that from happening, since he stopped the challenge altogether.
Congressional race
Cawthorn now faces a crowd of challengers back home hoping to take his seat in Congress.
The 11th Congressional District encompasses 15 counties in western North Carolina, including Cawthorn’s home in Henderson County.
Late last year, Cawthorn shocked everyone when he announced he would not run for reelection in his current district but would instead move one district over to run in an area believed to have been hand-drawn for N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore to run for Congress.
At the time, that district would have been more appealing to the freshman congressman because voters there leaned more predominately Republican than in Cawthorn’s home district, though his own district would still would have been an easy win.
However, the N.C. Supreme Court determined in early February that state lawmakers had drawn that map to give Republicans an unfair advantage and ordered legislators to redraw the maps by Feb. 18.
A day before filing began on Feb. 24, the courts released their own version of the congressional map to be used during the 2022 election. Under the new map, voters of Cawthorn’s adopted district leaned Democrat, and the surrounding districts included incumbents.
In the updated map, Cawthorn’s home district would be an easy win for a Republican candidate and he chose to return.
But going back home doesn’t come without its own set of problems. Cawthorn now faces seven opponents for the Republican nomination, including sitting state Sen. Chuck Edwards, and the woman he told supporters to vote for to replace him, former 11th District GOP chairwoman Michele Woodhouse.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 1:34 PM with the headline "NC voters can’t challenge Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s eligibility for office, judge rules."
