Davis, 62, faces 25-year-old Republican Madison Cawthorn for the 11th District seat vacated by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The district includes all or part of 17 western North Carolina counties.
Last month it was Cawthorn’s social media posts that drew fire.
In 2017 he posted pictures on Instagram of a trip to Adolf Hitler’s German mountain retreat. He said the trip to the Eagle’s Nest “has been on my bucket list for years. And it did not disappoint.” Critics saw it as part of what appeared to them to be a pattern of support for white nationalists.
“It’s the ugliest race in North Carolina,” said Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University. “Davis hit Cawthorn hard on his social media posts and it seems that turnabout is fair play.”
NC House candidate is under fire for posts some call sympathetic to white nationalists
It was an Aug. 13 Instagram post from a woman named Katrina Krulikas that suggested Cawthorn had made unwanted sexual advances six years ago, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times. A few days later the World, an Asheville-based Christian publication, reported that Cawthorn had once “exhibited sexually or verbally aggressive behavior” to other women.
Cawthorn, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in Washington, addressed the charge this month in a debate.
“I have been accused of sexual assault,” he told the forum sponsored by Blue Ridge Public Radio. “And I won’t lie to you. In high school and after I did try to kiss a girl. I kissed many girls in high school. And some of my attempts failed. I believe there’s a large difference between a failed attempt and sexual assault.”
He also dismissed suggestions that he supports white nationalists. That, he said in the forum, “is something I categorically reject.”
Cawthorn’s campaign web site, meanwhile, features a heading called “Violence and Perversion.”
“VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED,” it says on a page devoted to his opponent’s most outspoken tweets.
“I believe temperament is very important,” Cawthorn told the Observer. “At the end of the day when we compare the president’s tweets to Moe Davis’s tweets, the president looks like a sweet, innocent school boy.”
Explaining his often caustic tweets, Davis said, “that’s the kind of bombastic language you have to use to get noticed in print and on the air.”
“I certainly recognize that being a candidate is a different environment than being a commentator, and I do think I have to be more judicious explaining myself,” he told the Observer. “But that underlying sentiment — that Democrats have to do better at fighting back — hasn’t changed.”
He said he doesn’t expect the tweets to have much influence on voters.
VIOLENCE AND
PERVERSION
“Most of the heat I’ve gotten has been from people who weren’t likely to vote for me to begin with,” he said. “Others understood the context. They’re not going to vote for a 25-year-old with no education, training or experience who is far to the right.”
Cawthorn attended Patrick Henry College, a small Christian college in Virginia. Later, in a lawsuit stemming from the 2014 car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, he testified that he dropped out after a semester after getting mostly Ds.
Cawthorn, meanwhile, is trying to make an issue of his opponent’s background.
TERRORISTS AND ‘SWIFTBOATING’
Davis was once chief prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay. He initially welcomed the assignment. Then his superiors pressed him to use evidence collected through torture.
“I was being pushed to use evidence obtained by water-boarding” prisoners, he told the AVL Watchdog last month. “Torture is a great way to get somebody to talk, but it’s not the way to get the truth.”
Davis left Guantanamo in 2007.
Cawthorn told the Observer that he supports water-boarding, which became illegal in the U.S in 2009.
Women come forward to accuse Madison Cawthorn of aggressive sexual behavior
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