Madison Cawthorn Has A New Challenger For His House Seat—And She's A Lesbian Minister

For GOP Representative Madison Cawthorn, of North Carolina, the closing days of February 2021 did not go well.

United States paralympians called out Cawthorn for repeatedly lying about training to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic games.

Cawthorn's downward spiral kicked off when BuzzFeed News published a report alleging Cawthorn repeatedly committed sexual harassment during his college time at Patrick Henry College, a Christian school in Virginia.

According to that report, Cawthorn, who has staked his reputation on his Christian ideology, was predatory all over the place—on the campus, in his car and at his house. 150 former classmates signed on to a statement saying the allegations of repeated sexual misconduct were true.

And a day after that story ran, The Washington Post published another damning report. The article detailed how Cawthorn, who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, repeatedly lied claiming he was "declared dead" following the car accident that left him with his injury and his friend abandoned him at the crash site.

These latest reports came after questions were raised about Cawthorn's "bucket list" trip to Adolph Hitler's mountain retreat and a problematic use of a Holocaust quote to sell t-shirts.

That claim, according to people who literally pulled him from the wreck, was false.

Now, as if the universe was trying to put together a nasty trifecta for Cawthorn, someone in his district just announced that she plans to run for Congress, unseating him in the process.

Cawthorn's challenger is Jasmine Beach-Ferrara. She's a Christian minister, she has three kids, and she's gay.

Beach-Ferrara announced her bid with a campaign video that was posted to Twitter.

In that video, Beach-Ferrara pulled no punches.

"Some people will say, a gay woman who's a Christian minister just can't get elected in the South. Not to mention she's a Democrat."

"But I say, an insurrectionist, who flirts with Nazis, and fires up a violent crowd to attack our democracy, well, he shouldn't get reelected anywhere."

In the video, Beach-Ferrara's words overlay a clip showing Cawthorn egging on the crowd that would later storm the Capitol on the morning of the Capitol riot.

Beach-Ferrara currently serves as an elected member of the Buncome County Commission, where she has gained a reputation for working to enact bipartisan solutions to expand access to early childhood education, tackle the opioid epidemic and keep people safe during the pandemic, according to ABC 13 News.

People on Twitter were stoked to see a worthy challenger to Cawthorn.

Beach-Ferrara's campaign is only getting started. As Cawthorn was just sworn in early this year, he's not up for reelection until the November of 2022.

And GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression are concerns in North Carolina.

But he'd better be prepared to take on Beach-Ferrara, who has plenty of time to put together a strong effort.