If all goes according to plan, Madison Cawthorn, 24, will be the next representative from North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. He will turn 25, the minimum age to serve in the House, just a few months before the election.
Mr. Cawthorn won the Republican primary on Tuesday to replace former Representative Mark Meadows, who is now President Trump’s chief of staff. In the process, he defeated a much better-known and better-funded candidate, Lynda Bennett, who had the support of both Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump.
He ran on a platform just as conservative and pro-Trump as Ms. Bennett’s, but cast himself as a fresh face not beholden to Washington insiders. He also ran on his personal story: In 2014, when he was 18, he was almost killed in a car accident. He is partly paralyzed and uses a wheelchair.
If he wins in November — as he is expected to do in a solidly Republican district — Mr. Cawthorn will surpass Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, as the youngest member of Congress. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was 29 when she was sworn in.
We spoke with Mr. Cawthorn late Wednesday about the “generational time bomb” he sees in his party, and about how his injury changed his perspective. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
If you win in November, you’ll be one of the youngest people ever elected to Congress. What’s the significance of that to you, or do you try not to think about it?
I don’t think about it as a bad thing, but what I do think about is the reason I’m so young is because I don’t think we have any time to waste.
I was so frustrated after 2016 with the Republican Party. When we had the House, the presidency and the Senate, and we had a pretty fair Supreme Court, I really expected to see all of these things that Republicans have wanted for so long finally come to fruition, but then it all kind of fell flat on its face. The president was having to drag Congress along to get anything done.
Which priorities do you feel fell flat? Are you thinking of the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act?
That’s a big one. But for so long, especially when you look at Congressman Paul Ryan, he had run for so long on being the one to really get us closer to a balanced budget. But then we really didn’t see any attempt to get closer to a balanced budget, in my opinion, and then we went further and further into debt.
Especially when you think about the Affordable Care Act, how we had to pass an amended version of the farm bill — you can go on and on.
There’s been a lot of discussion about how young Democrats diverge from older Democrats, but not as much on the Republican side. Are there areas where you feel like you bring a different perspective to the table than older Republicans?
Well, I like the environment. I think anybody who owns land or really likes going out hunting, they care about the environment as well.
I do have very strong conservative values. I think the place where we really do differ is that 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.
What does that better packaging look like?
You look at border security — after 2015, 2016, when we really started talking about the crisis on our southern border, I believe the way that it was messaged came across as if we were xenophobic, when that’s not the case at all. I believe all of us love legal immigration. We love how the diversity adds to our country.
If it had been messaged properly, we would have said this is because of national security. We have cartels on our southern border that do billions of dollars of revenue every single year. They’ve shown that they can defeat the Mexican military anytime they want. And so if they are able to effectively get people across our border at any point they choose, I think that’s a major security threat. I think if we had conveyed that that is the reason we want more security, it would have gone over much better.
Polls show a big generational gap in political support, with most young voters supporting Democrats. What does the Republican Party need to do to change that?
That’s a big reason why I’m running, actually. The main purpose is because I believe there’s a generational time bomb going off in the Republican Party. For so long, we’ve just kind of been the party of “no” without offering a lot of really good answers.
I think we have not been working hard enough to really reach out and try to appeal to younger voters, and we’re starting to see ramifications of that in national elections. We’re continually starting to lose the popular vote.
What are the better answers you feel you can offer?
Take health care, for example. I was in a terrible car accident six years ago. I had over $3 million in medical debt, and that was a very insurmountable amount of money, seemingly. It was something that I never really dealt with before — I went from being someone who rarely went to the doctor to all of a sudden being somebody who was a prime consumer of health care in our country.
I think what we need to do is have more competition and more patient choices. That’s something I’m looking forward to introducing, is to remove a lot of the regulations in the health care industry. Here in North Carolina, Blue Cross Blue Shield has a virtual monopoly. I think if we bring in a few more insurance companies, it’ll open up more competition.
Another way I think I’d be able to help Republicans win the millennial and Gen Z vote is through social media. The left has gotten very good at social media, whereas the right has kind of trailed behind. You see people like Congressman Dan Crenshaw as being the only Republican member who’s very savvy when it comes to social media. I think we need to be able to compete not only on a traditional debate stage or on cable news, but also in the new town square.
You ran in part on your story of resilience, on your accident and your disability. How did that experience change your perspective?
It taught me grit, it taught me who I am when everything’s in disarray, it taught me the foundation that I’m built on. But also, it taught me a lesson which I don’t think I would have learned for several more decades, probably — one of empathy and one of being able to see people who are disenfranchised, who feel like society’s left them all alone.
I really believe that I’m now able to take sides with people who are lost and to be able to see people for who they are, and not just look over someone who we don’t recognize.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
