Rep. Madison Cawthorn's primary challenger Chuck Edwards wants to focus on results for North Carolina — not his opponent's many scandals

• Madison Cawthorn is facing a series of controversies ahead of the May 17 primary election.
• His opponent Chuck Edwards wants to focus on issues critical to western North Carolina.

HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina — Multiple scandals involving guns, money, cocaine orgies, and a nude video are rocking Rep. Madison Cawthorn ahead of his May 17 Republican primary.

But for Cawthorn's most formidable GOP challenger, North Carolina state Sen. Chuck Edwards, such drama is the last thing he wants to talk about.

"My qualms with Madison Cawthorn are based on his performance and his poor attendance record in Congress," Edwards told Insider during an interview at his Hendersonville office. "I'm the only person in this race that has actually done the things that all the other candidates in this race say that they want to accomplish."

From January 2021 to April 2022, Cawthorn missed 37 of 590 congressional roll call votes, according to an analysis from GovTrack.us, which tracks votes in Congress. The analysis ranks Cawthorn among Congress' more absentee members when it comes to such votes.

Edwards is widely viewed by North Carolina political observers as the biggest threat to Cawthorn among six other Republican primary challengers. And for good reason: he has the backing of US Sen. Thom Tillis, a fellow Republican from North Carolina.

Edwards also represents a stark contrast to Cawthorn, both in substance and profile.

He lacks Cawthorn's large social media following — Edwards has 1,032 Twitter followers compared to Cawthorn's 475,800 as of Friday morning — or uses the same hyperbolic language as the Republican incumbent.

"If our election systems continue to be rigged and continued to be stolen then it's going to lead to one place and that's bloodshed," Cawthorn said at a Republican event in 2021 — a signal that he supported former President Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 presidential election results were not properly counted.

The 61-year-old Edwards, who has served in the North Carolina State Senate since 2016, defines himself as a "conservative" and a "businessman transformed into a public servant." He is careful not to describe himself as a politician.

Prior to joining the North Carolina State Senate, Edwards served as a board director for Macon Bank, a local community bank, according to his website.

He also touts owning seven North Carolina-based McDonald's restaurant franchises with his wife. On the second floor of his office space sits a showcase of awards and plaques he received for being a restaurant franchise owner.

If elected into Congress, Edwards says he wants to prioritize combating illegal immigration, building a border wall, and lowering inflation.

Tillis has praised Edwards, stating that "he's a hardworking conservative leader who delivers conservative results."

Tillis has also publicly criticized Cawthorn, saying he has "fallen well short of the most basic standards Western North Carolina expects from their representatives."

Political stardom

When asked about Cawthorn and his latest controversies, Edwards said that "it's obvious that he got caught up in political stardom and turned his back on the people in these mountains."

He added: "The biggest problem in Washington is that we have too many DC politicians that have forgotten what their job is. I believe that people in the mountains are tired of the political rhetoric. They're tired of the grandstanding and they're looking for someone to go to Washington, DC, fight off the establishment, roll up their sleeves, and actually go to work."

Cawthorn, the youngest member of Congress, is embroiled in several controversies. This includes a political action committee filing an ethics complaint against him, police citing Cawthorn for bringing a loaded gun into a Charlotte airport, and in Mach claiming on a podcast that he witnessed drug use and was invited to an "orgy" by Republican lawmakers.

Cawthorn later walked back these remarks, saying he exaggerated. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Cawthorn that he had "lost his trust" after Cawthorn made those remarks, according to Politico.

Edwards told Insider that if Cawthorn is reelected, his strained relationship with Republican congressional leaders will only hurt his constituents.

"When you lose the trust of the leader of your caucus, you're not going to be effective in order to represent the people back at home," Edwards said.

When Insider visited Cawthorn's Hendersonville office this week, his campaign team declined a request for an interview and said Cawthorn himself was "not available for an interview."

Cawthorn has recently spoken out about some of these accusations on social media, tweeting on Wednesday, "I'm NOT backing down. I told you there would be a drip drip campaign. Blackmail won't win. We will."

Asked about how he feels as the primary day approaches, Edwards responded, "terrific."

"We've got a winning team," he said. "We have incredible support with our endorsements, our fundraising, our boots on the ground, the feedback that I am getting from voters; I am feeling great."

Edwards will need to place first and also gain more than 30 percent of the vote during the May 17 primary in order to defeat Cawthorn and win the Republican race outright. If Edwards doesn't meet this threshold, it is still possible that he and Cawthorn could both advance and face each other one-on-one in a July runoff.