Trump congratulates 24-year-old who upset White House's chosen candidate in N.C. runoff
Madison Cawthorn routed his Trump-backed opponent by more than 30 percentage points.
Twenty-four-year-old GOP congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn said President Donald Trump called him from Air Force One to congratulate the House hopeful on his victory over a White House-endorsed Republican opponent.
Cawthorn routed Trump-backed Lynda Bennett by more than 30 percentage points in Tuesday's Republican primary for North Carolina's 11th Congressional District, the seat previously held by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Cawthorn, whose district leans heavily Republican, said the president congratulated him on his “beautiful” and “impressive” upset victory over Bennett, a local real estate agent and a longtime Meadows acquaintance.
“He was talking about how amazing of a victory it was. He defined it as 'beautiful.' You know, just talking about how impressive it was that we were able to overcome just so many large obstacles that we did,” Cawthorn said, calling the phone call “an honor.”
Meadows, and then Trump himself, went all-in for Bennett, earning Meadows accusations that he’d timed his surprise retirement from the House in December in order to benefit a handpicked successor, Bennett.
A super PAC aligned with the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which Meadows co-founded, spent nearly half a million dollars to boost Bennett in the race. Trump recorded a robocall for Bennett, telling district residents that she would “fight crazy Nancy Pelosi and that radical socialist liberal group trying to destroy our country.”
Cawthorn nodded to that dynamic Wednesday, contending that whereas he kept his campaign local, “my opponent was focused on D.C. politics and just trying to focus on Washington.”
“I really appreciate where we're at right now. I believe, you know, the president recognized that we ran a campaign that was very difficult to beat and also that we're someone who can really help ease this partisan divide that's going on in our country right now and help bring a lot of our voters together,” Cawthorn said Wednesday.
The 24-year-old will face off against Democrat Morris Davis in November. If he is victorious, Cawthorn would be the youngest member of Congress in decades.
He told “Morning Joe” that he hadn’t yet heard from Meadows, whom he’s called a mentor and who supported him after a 2014 car accident that left Cawthorn paralyzed from the waist down. Asked why Meadows may not have supported his bid for Congress, Cawthorn said he believed voters in the district were likely wondering the same thing. Still, he indicated there were no hard feelings.
“It appears we did not need it,” Cawthorn noted.