25-Year-Old Republican Who Won In North Carolina Will Soon Be Youngest Congress Member

Madison Cawthorn will soon become the youngest member of Congress after he joins the North Carolina delegation in the House of Representatives in January. On Tuesday, the 25-year-old defeated 62-year-old retired Air Force Colonel and former prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay Democrat Moe Davis, in the state’s 11th Congressional District, which accounts for most of Western North Carolina, reports BuzzFeed News. Cawthorn, the youngest Republican ever to be elected to the house, rose to fame following his surprise primary win earlier this year. During the June primary, he achieved quite a feat after beating Republican Lynda Bennet, an establishment-backed candidate who was endorsed by President Trump himself.

Following his decisive victory on Tuesday, Cawthorn set the tone for his first term in office with a tweet which read: Cry more, lib. He will now serve in the seat which was previously held by Mark Meadows who left the position to become President Donald Trump's chief of staff. Meadows too endorsed Cawthorn's opponent Republican Lynda Bennet at the time. Cawthorn, who won the seat representing North Carolina’s 11th District by more than 54,000 votes, turned 25 back in August and met the minimum age to run for office in the house, reports The Washington Post.

He will become the first person to be born in the 1990s who has been elected in the Congress and will be joining more than two dozen millennials serving in the federal legislature, as per the Pew Research Center. Until now New York Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez held the title of the youngest member to be elected at 29 years, 2 months, and 22 days in 2018, according to CNN. While revealing his decision to run for office Cawthorn cited Ocasio-Cortez. Taking to his website, he wrote that he ran for office because "our faith, our freedoms and our values are under assault from coastal elites and leftists like (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

Now, the youngest senator is Missouri Republican Josh Hawley, 40, but overall the current Congress has some of the oldest members ever, and Cawthorn wants to change that. "We’ve been sending the exact same thing to Washington so many times," he told BuzzFeed News in June. "Congress is designed to be a cross-section of the American people and it’s definitely not," he added. Although he is considered a millennial per the standards used by the Pew Research Centre, Cawthorn identifies as a member of Gen Z. Cawthorn opened up about the adversities that he had to overcome in order to be where he is today during his primetime speech in August’s Republican National Convention.

In 2014, Cawthorn was in a car accident that left him partially paralyzed but that did not stop the real estate investment company owner and motivational speaker from achieving what he wants. He is fiscally conservative, pro-gun, anti-abortion, and an immigration hardliner, who supports the limits for Congress members. Cawthorn, who was homeschooled in Hendersonville, noted on his website that he is "committed to defending the values of faith, family and the freedom that have made America great."

Shortly after making headline for his primary victory, Cawthorn was surrounded with controversies after a photo of him visiting Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest compound in southern Germany back in 2017 surfaced. Apparently, he had mentioned on the caption that the trip was on his "bucket list" for long. Furthermore, questions were raised about his ties to white supremacist-linked symbols. Responding to these allegations, Cawthorn told the Associated Press, "I think racism is disgusting." He claimed that his political opponents "want to try to twist it to where I am some kind of Nazi sympathizer when I’m a man in a wheelchair." He added, "These cowards and these bastards would have killed me."