Republican congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn, who defeated the candidate endorsed by President Trump to win his party’s nomination in White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ former North Carolina district, said he was inspired to run for office by disappointment in how his party handled full control of government in 2017.
“The first thing that made me want to run so much for Congress is in 2016, when the Republicans held the House, the Senate, and we [won] the presidency, I genuinely believed we were going to see some sweeping changes,” Cawthorn, 24, said in a Hill.TV interview Monday.
However, once President Trump took office, “it felt like Donald Trump was having to pull teeth from Congress to try to get anything done, and so I want to go over to Washington D.C. to break that status quo, to actually get something done,” he added.
Cawthorn, who will be the youngest member of Congress if he wins the largely Republican district in November, attributed his victory to “hard work” the party favorite had not been willing to put in.
“I would say the biggest difference-maker is what is lacking so much in Washington D.C. today, and that’s hard work,” Cawthorn said. “I had a team of about six of my best friends fly in from all over the country, we put in eight hours a day for about six months and we refused to stop… it’s the hard work that made the difference.”
“We fought tooth and nail for every single person, and I really think the people of western North Carolina really appreciated having someone who cared so much about them,” he added.
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