Inside the Republican campaign to take down Madison Cawthorn

An allied super PAC is bombarding the district with TV ads and mail pieces highlighting Cawthorn’s string of scandals and indiscretions — a list that gets longer with almost each passing day.“Madison decided to throw elbows at these people,” said Carlton Huffman, a Republican operative from North Carolina who’s supporting Edwards. “He believes that there are new rules of politics in the Trump era and you don’t have to kiss anybody’s ring in the established party.”For Tillis — who doesn’t face voters again until 2026 after winning reelection as a firm supporter of Trump — the turn against Cawthorn is driven by frustration with the freshman’s antics, disappointment with his scant legislative record and an element of personal payback, according to Republican officials and operatives in North Carolina.“There is a ton of bad blood. The race is shaping up to be a contest between MAGA star power and old-fashioned political pull — a test of how far a candidate (besides Trump himself) can go in juicing online outrage for campaign cash and bucking the party establishment.“There are so many people saying crazy things these days and people shrug their shoulders, but it was more of the personal behavior that people started to view him as immature and erratic,” said Jim Blaine, of the firm, Differentiators, who says his group’s polling for the national Republican group GOPAC shows Cawthorn dipping in popularity and Edwards rising since March. Rather, it was his insults of Tillis that roiled North Carolina Republican politics.Tillis’s allies, including Susan Tillis, started contacting people at the speech, furious that Cawthorn was using a party function to attack a senator from his own party, according to Woodhouse.