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N.C. 11 candidates face off
September 9-15, 2020
Republican Madison Cawthorn (left) and Democrat Moe Davis squared off last weekend in a debate series that marked their first face-to-face meeting of the campaign, during which both candidates are seeking to replace Mark Meadows as Western North Carolina’s congressional representative. Holly Kays photos
Two-part debate series covers issues from global to local
Smoky Mountain News
BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER ongressional candidates Moe Davis and Madison Cawthorn clashed last week in a pair of debates spanning two days and three hours, covering everything from health care and economics to gun rights and race relations. The encounters took place Sept. 4 and 5 at Western Carolina University facilities in Asheville and Cullowhee and were organized by The Smoky Mountain News, Blue Ridge Public Radio and Mountain Xpress. It was the first time the candidates squared off directly heading toward the General Election, when they will compete for the N.C. 11 seat vacated earlier this year by Mark Meadows, who left to become Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump. SMN Staff Writer Cory Vaillancourt moderated the events, with questions coming from six different panelists: Lenoir-Rhyne University Equity and Diversity Institute developer Aisha Adams; former Asheville Citizen Times political reporter and current Mountain Xpress contributor Mark Barrett; Pete Kaliner, a longtime N.C. political reporter, radio host and podcaster; WCU political science and public affairs department chair Chris Cooper; WCU professor of economics and director of WCU’s Center for 6
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the Study of Free Enterprise Edward Lopez; and Principal Chief Richard G. Sneed, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Throughout the debates, Asheville Democrat Davis emphasized his record of experience and service to the country. Davis retired as a colonel after 25 years in the U.S. military, and since then he has been a law professor, judge at the U.S. Department of Labor and head of the Congressional Research Service’s Foreign Affairs Defense and Trade Division. “You’ve got a clear choice,” he said during his opening statement for the Sept. 5 debate in Cullowhee. “My record’s out there. You can see it. You can send me and 35 years of experience, or you can send my opponent and his three-ring binder.” At 25, Cawthorn would be the youngest person in Congress if he won as the Republican candidate in November, and the Henderson County native turned Davis’ criticism of his youth and relative inexperience on its head. “Over 60 percent of the people who make up our Congress are lawyers,” said Cawthorn during the second night of debate. “And I’ll tell you if that’s what we needed to fix our economy, to fix our country, to fix racial tensions, that would have been fixed long ago. We need to send an outsider to Congress.” Cawthorn attempted to paint Davis as “a member of the D.C. swamp,” who would happily place the gavel back in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and do all he could to support the “party of AOC and M-OE.” Davis is a “firm supporter of the Green New Deal” proposed by New York Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cawthorn warned, an expensive plan that would “waterboard our future generations” with debt. Cawthorn further criticized Davis’ actions during his tenure as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, during which he testified on behalf of two detainees. Davis, meanwhile, characterized Cawthorn as a privileged youth with no work experience to speak of but a tendency to “play fast and loose with the truth.” He accused Cawthorn of accepting “stolen valor” by leading the public to believe that he had been accepted to the U.S. Navel Academy prior to the 2014 car accident that left him paralyzed in both legs. His application had in fact been rejected prior to that accident, Cawthorn said in a 2017 deposition, though during the debates he added that while he had received an initial rejection, he was in fact still hoping to ultimately get accepted. Davis also homed in on Cawthorn’s statement during the second night of debates that prior to his accident he had stood 6 feet, 3 inches tall, when in the deposition he’d said he was 6 feet or 6 feet, 1 inch at the time. “Every time Mr. Cawthorn tells a story he’s bigger in that story, but they’re not truthful stories,” said Davis. Cawthorn, meanwhile, made the case that Davis’s stories about himself are not always true either, at least when it comes to his positions on issues. He quoted a February article from The Blue Banner, the student newspaper of UNC Asheville, which reports that during a private event with his supporters, Davis stated that while he does not disagree with banning assault rifles, “he does believe he
would lose the election if he made that opinion public.” “The reason that he is so aggressively attacking is because he knows that he can’t stand on what he truly believes,” Cawthorn said during the first debate in Asheville. You (Cawthorn) have been accused of both sexual assault and having ties to white nationalism. How do women, black people, LGBTQIA and other marginalized communities know that we can trust you, and what experiences do you have in creating equitable policy? The very first question of the very first night of debates, presented by Aisha Adams, addressed head-on previous reports in which multiple women accused Cawthorn of sexual assault and reporters questioned various symbols potentially tying the candidate to white nationalism. Cawthorn replied that “there’s really no basis” for the assertion that he’s a white nationalist and said that his fiancé is biracial. As to the sexual assault allegations, he said that “I kissed many girls in high school and some of my attempts failed, and I believe that there’s a large difference in failed attempts versus sexual assault.” “If I have a daughter, I want her to grow up in a world where people will have to ask permission to touch her,” said Cawthorn. “I think that would have made my high school experience much less awkward if I knew that was a question that could generally be asked. But also if I have a son, I want him to grow up in a world where he’s not accused of being a sexual predator, just
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