Former Rep. Madison Cawthorn, among the youngest people ever elected to the U.S. House, announced Tuesday that he is running again, this time in Florida.
The 30-year-old Cawthorn, a Republican who represented Asheville and the surrounding region in western North Carolina from 2021 to 2023, is now running to represent the reliably red Fort Meyers area in southwest Florida. That seat is being vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds, who is seeking the GOP nomination in Florida’s 2026 gubernatorial race.
Cawthorn also received widespread attention after saying that people he had “looked up to” in Washington used cocaine and invited him to orgies.
Cawthorn, who lost his re-election bid in North Carolina’s GOP primary in 2022, enters a crowded field in Florida that includes former Rep. Chris Collins of New York, who resigned in 2019 after an insider trading scandal and was later pardoned by Trump.
“I’m running for Congress to stand with President Trump, defend our conservative values and fight to stop the radical left every single time,” Cawthorn said in his campaign video announcement.
While serving in Congress, Cawthorn pushed false conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and said without evidence that “our election systems continue to be rigged.” Scandal has followed Cawthorn in his brief political career. He accrued several traffic violations in recent years and was stopped twice in North Carolina at airport security checkpoints with a gun; he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in one of the gun incidents and wasn’t charged in the other. Cawthorn also received widespread attention after saying that people he had “looked up to” in Washington used cocaine and invited him to orgies.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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