Polls have closed in North Carolina and now we wait for results! This is tonight’s first real test of Trump’s endorsement power. Will his candidate in the GOP Senate primary, Rep. Ted Budd, win?
But that’s hardly Trump’s most interesting endorsement tonight. That distinction belongs to freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn. Despite endorsing him in 2021, Trump has reportedly said he’s a little “weirded out” by him.
Cawthorn, as we’ve documented on the site and on this live blog, is a politician riddled with controversy to the extent that many of his colleagues in Congress are backing his challenger. But judging the most recent polls of the race, it looks as if he’s going to squeak out the 30 percent he needs to avoid a runoff.
Let’s talk more broadly, though, about “amateur candidates” — or those with little previous political experience running and winning. Are representatives like Cawthorn the future? And by that, I mean, politicians very uninterested in the act of governing.