The battle to use the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause to bar Representative Madison Cawthorn from the congressional ballot will be waged in the far western foothills of North Carolina. This new setting clicked into focus after the 26-year-old representative re-filed to run in the newly formed 11th congressional district, which encompasses his home in Henderson County. It is considered safely Republican, though Mr. Cawthorn will face a robust slate of primary challengers.Mr. Cawthorn had earlier been eyeing the newly formed 13th district, to the east, but changed his mind as the electoral boundaries shifted in response to litigation and a revolving door of map drawers. The push to tie Mr. Cawthorn to the events of January 6, 2021, in an insurrectionary capacity and thus make him ineligible to continue in office will also require a new set of plaintiffs, as those who affixed their signatures to challenge Mr. Cawthorn are now no longer whom he will run to represent. Mr. Cawthorn’s change in district will affect but not derail the constitutional challenge to Mr. Cawthorn’s candidacy. Free Speech For People, the organization spearheading the effort to block Mr. Cawthorn, confirmed to the Sun that the challenge will continue with plaintiffs drawn from the new district.District musical chairs ensued because the Tar Heel State’s Supreme Court held that the electoral map generated by the state legislature leaned too heavily toward Republicans, violating the state constitution. A North Carolina Superior Court — their term for a court of appeals — subsequently rejected another GOP-drawn map in favor of one generated by a nonpartisan group. The rejected map would have given Republicans six safe seats to Democrats’ four, while the current version splits those down the middle. Judges in the Tar Heel State have followed their colleagues on the bench nationwide in their receptivity to Democratic objections to GOP-drawn maps, giving the Democrats a needed advantage in what otherwise looks like a challenging political climate. Even as Mr. Cawthorn gets set to defend his home turf, North Carolina’s elections board will be tasked with deciding whether Mr. Cawthorn is eligible to run when the challenge to his candidacy is inevitably refiled. As the Sun has reported, a request from Mr. Cawthorn to intervene and guarantee his spot on the ballot is currently lodged in federal court. He argues that in judging his qualifications as a candidate, North Carolina is overstepping its constitutional bounds. The elections board has responded: “States have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges.”Mr. Cawthorn continues to speak out against the efforts to derail his political career. Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s television show, Mr. Cawthorn acknowledges that his opponents are “very close” to blocking him from the ballot.While Mr. Cawthorn has finally decided where he will run for office, whether he will be able to do so is very much an open question.
