In August of 2015, 16 months after the accident that nearly killed him and left him unable to walk, Madison Cawthorn exchanged text messages with the friend who had fallen asleep at the. He was elected to Congress in 2020 as a member of the Republican Party to replace Republican Mark Meadows. I think the press should be allowed to stay, he said, so people can hear what we have to say., Three wooden crosses and a sign for a gun show are located a few miles from Cawthorns residence. Here he was, though, three weeks past the date he turned 20, the handsome, charmed second son of an upper middle class financial adviser father and a homemaker mother who doubled as her boys teacher, a onetime football linebacker, avid weightlifter and duck-hunter, cheerful Chick-fil-A cashier. Angeli Wright/Citizen-Times. He tried to kick out the windshield, but it wouldn't budge. One night late last month at the Lambuth Inn, a Christian retreat on Lake Junaluska, he was absent at the Haywood County GOPs forum for the candidates running for his seat. Madison Cawthorn was involved in a car accident at 18 years old. Do I have any value?, As a child I thought I wanted to rule the world As a young adult I know I do., a caption from Madison Cawthorns Instagram, One day my dad had a really tough conversation with me, Cawthorn said, and it was basically saying, Son, youre going to need to make a decision. Cawthorn uses a wheelchair because he was seriously injured in a 2014 car accident while riding as a passenger in the car of a friend who fell asleep at the wheel, according to his 2019 federal court filing against the auto insurance company. Politics is like a vice amplifier And then when youre a young man who has a terrible accident like that, and your identity is kind of stripped from you, all of that is amplified even more.. By Cawthorn's own telling, he was a successful business owner headed to the Naval Academy before his injury tragically reordered his life. But as the Post detailed in its report this week, some of Cawthorn's life story had been exaggerated or misrepresented by himself and his campaign a pattern epitomized by his story about his wreck. Needing to get at least 30 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in July, Cawthorn is running out of money, running no ads on local TV and barely campaigning and all but trying to hide when he does. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Madison Cawthorn Is Trying to Commit Every Possible Scandal - Intelligencer