N.C. 11 candidates face off during two-night debate

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

BY HOLLY KAYS S TAFF WRITER

Congressional 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 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 F

Strong support for Cawthorn outside NC-11 debates

BY HANNAH MCLEOD S TAFF WRITER

While N.C. Congressional District 11 candidates Moe Davis and Madison Cawthorn got into a heated debate inside during the “Best in the West” online events Sept. 4-5, the excitement overflowed outside of the venue as well.

The event took place at the WCU campus in Biltmore Park on Friday night. Though the event was streamed online, with no seating available to the public, roughly 100 Cawthorn fans gathered outside the building to show their support for the young Republican. On the other hand, Davis didn’t have any outside fanfare.

Several trucks parked around the building toted Cawthorn for Congress signs, and countless more drove circles around the nearest roundabout honking and shouting support, waving Cawthorn, Trump 2020, Blue Lives Matter and Rebel flags.

“I’m a veteran, and we have a large veterans’ group that is supporting Madison. We want to show our support tonight. Because we feel that he is a patriot. And he’s gonna do a lot for us veterans out here,” said Harvey Stanley, who was holding a “Veterans for Cawthorn” sign. “There are a lot of veterans in Western North Carolina. And they depend on people in Congress to help them out. Mark Meadows did that for us. If Madison takes his place, he’ll probably do the same thing for us.”

Over the sounds of cheers and car horns, Stanley went on to say why he couldn’t support Davis. “To me, he doesn’t care about the people who served, he didn’t care about saving American lives, that’s why I, as a vet

because he wants to kiss a girl.”

Davis, meanwhile, touted his endorsement from the National Organization of Women and his record of “having fought for equal rights for everyone.”

“I’m proud to say I haven’t had to spend one minute explaining that I’m not a Nazi,” he said.

To what extent do you believe that human activity is causing global warming and climate change? What steps if any do you support to deal with this issue?

When asked his opinion about climate change and the environment, Cawthorn said that climate change “is not a hoax” and called himself a “green conservative.” However, he vehemently denounced the Green New Deal as “a joke” that would “waterboard” future generations with $51 trillion in debt each decade, taking funds that could be used for needs like improved broadband infrastructure and increased Payment In Lieu of Taxes funding. Cawthorn eran want Madison Cawthorn in there and not Davis.”

Police were present outside the building, and as the crowd continued to grow, one young supporter got the crowd’s attention and asked that they split into two separate groups, with a wide amount of space between them.

At 4 p.m. Friday, North Carolina entered Phase 2.5 of easing COVID-19 restrictions, which still limits outdoor gatherings to 50 people. Face masks are still required in this phase, but a majority of the crowd did not wear one.

Cawthorn came out to address his supporters just before the event began. He spoke to each group separately thanking them for their support and assuring them that he “would not let them down.”

One supporter, who asked not to be named, thanked Cawthorn for a prayer he had previously offered for her mother prior to her mother’s hip surgery. The supporter’s mother was there in a wheelchair, and Cawthorn was quick to ask her how the surgery had gone.

“While he was on the phone, I told him that my mother was about to go into surgery because she had a fall and she broke her hip. He stopped all of a sudden and he said this beautiful prayer for my mother before she went into surgery,” the supporter later told The Smoky Mountain News.

John Hart, public relations consultant and spokesperson for Cawthorn’s campaign, said President Donald Trump’s support of Cawthorn’s campaign, “creates a lot of energy and enthusiasm. But I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about both president Trump and also about Madison. Madison is his own person, he is not a Trump conservative, he’s not a Reagan conservative, he’s a Madison Cawthorn conservative, so he’s writing his own script in real time and we’re all watching it happen. So, it’s an exciting moment.”

Almost 2 hours later, when the debate had

Watch the debates

This story contains just a portion of the lively back-and-forth featured in the livestreamed debates. Watch the whole thing at www.facebook.com/blueridgepublic.

said he supports an “all of the above approach” to environmental solutions that would use wind, solar and nuclear power to bring the United States to energy independence without fossil fuels. Cawthorn also advocated for updating the “outdated” National Environmental Policy Act, which he said delays the deployment of projects that would promote a clean environment.

“Climate alarmism is on the side of the left,” he said. “If they truly wanted to fix the problems that we’re facing, they would embrace nuclear energy.”

Davis took a firm stance as to the reality of climate change and Americans’ duty to do

Madison Cawthorn addresses crowd of supporters in Biltmore Park in Asheville.

ended, several supporters were still out front as Cawthorn and Davis left the building.

Things were quieter on the second night of the debate, which took place at the WCU Health and Human Sciences Building in Cullowhee. About 50 Cawthorn supporters — ranging in age from elementary to elderly — gathered in one of the lower parking lots. No Davis supporters were present.

The Cawthorn supporters set up fold-out chairs and truck beds in front of a large white trailer that would hold the projector screen for the debate taking place inside, with several pick-ups parked throughout the lot bearing large Cawthorn political signs.

Chelsea Walsh had traveled the hourplus from her home in Hendersonville to be in Cullowhee that night. Walsh, 32, said that “one of the coolest things” about Cawthorn

something about it, holding up green technology as “the path forward.” Solar energy, especially on the roof of individual houses, is a safeguard against dependence on foreign oil and a boon to the environment, he said. In Congress, said Davis, he would plan to extend tax credits for alternative energy that “the Trump administration and Republicans are slowly peeling away.” It’s not reasonable to cite dollars as cents as a reason not to act on the environment, he said.

“I don’t believe in putting profit first, whether it’s with COVID-19 or with the environment,” he said. “I believe in being an adult, being responsible. We have a responsibility to take care of the environment in this area that we live in.”

Later in the debates, Davis said that while he did “like the Green New Deal,” he has “refused to commit” to endorsing it and has lost endorsements from some progressive groups as a result. Cawthorn countered by saying that prior to the Primary Election Davis’ website stated that he did “fully support” the Green New Deal. is his ability to gather support across generations — her grandmother and her mother are both Cawthorn supporters, and her niece and nephews are excited to go to the polls as well.

“It’s neat, because I’ve never seen a politician bring in so many different groups of people,” she said. “I feel like we need younger people in politics.”

Supporters hailed not just from Cawthorn’s hometown of Hendersonville but also from the various corners of Jackson County.

“I’m here to support Madison. He is trying his best to do what he can, and I think he’s got a sincere heart to completely keep his words,” said Emil Milky, 81, of Sylva. Staff writer Holly Kays contributed to this report

What is your view of the concerns about law enforcement’s treatment of Blacks and other people of color, including deaths like that of George Floyd that have sparked so many protests around the country this year? What, if anything, do you think we as a nation and in Congress should be doing about these concerns?

Davis said that the “defund the police” tagline has done a “huge disservice” to the movement, and that his background gives him great respect for law enforcement.

“I think issues like mental health and alcoholism and drug addiction should be treated as health issues and not criminal justice issues,” he said. “So I’d love to see us reimagining law enforcement and looking at what our communities want our law enforcement professionals to do. And again, I think the defund the police label was a horrible label, and I certainly don’t support that concept.”

Davis said he would like to see something