NC Rep. Tricia Cotham says political road-rage driver targeted her mom and child
State Rep. Tricia Cotham said an enraged woman screamed vulgarities at her mother and a son and swerved her car at them in a politically motivated case of road rage this week.
The woman raised her middle finger at Cotham’s child and kept honking her horn as she swerved at them, the Mecklenburg County Republican said on Facebook Saturday.
“She tried to run my family off the road and get them to hit her,” Cotham said, including a picture in her post of the angry driver’s Toyota Avalon and its license plate number.
In the same Facebook post Saturday afternoon, Cotham included what she called unrelated, harassing comments by someone using a fake Facebook account under the pseudonym Moots Oots.
“Tricia Cotham’s children deserve know how she is a liar,” read the grammatically incorrect Moots Oots post. “She is a puppet that has destroyed democracy for her district.”
The reference may have been in reaction to Cotham’s historic April 5 switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, which gave the GOP supermajority voting power in the General Assembly.
Cotham replied to Moots Oots on Facebook: “Harassing and targeting my family is WRONG. You don’t like me, you come for me. ME! This post is just another example of the evil behavior we endure. So, ‘Moots,’ hiding behind a fake account? Bless.”
Cotham’s mother is Pat Cotham, a Democratic Mecklenburg County at-large commissioner. The Cothams didn’t immediately return messages from The Charlotte Observer on Saturday.
Tricia Cotham didn’t say on Facebook if she filed a police incident report in either case. She also didn’t name the road where her mom and child encountered the angry woman or how her mom managed to avoid running off the road. She also did not identify the son.
On “X,” formerly Twitter, on Saturday, ex-NC GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse said Pat Cotham’s car “had the Cotham name on it and (the) driver apparently thought is was @triciacotham.”
“This is so incredibly dangerous and disgusting,” said Woodhouse, now N.C. executive director of the conservative group American Majority.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This story was originally published August 12, 2023 at 5:17 PM.