New DCCC polling released today in Business Insider shows that Madison Cawthorn is in for a tough race with this controversial Republican barely leading retired Colonel Democrat Moe Davis (46-41) and with Biden and Trump statistically tied (46-48). The survey, conducted August 5-6, polled 500 likely general election voters with a combination of automated and live calls and has a margin of error of ±4.4 percentage points.
Further underlining Cawthorn’s troubles, this poll was conducted before it was discovered that Cawthorn has produced multiple signals from his campaign that are widely perceived as white supremacist. These were first uncovered by a journalist profiling his race in a story released Monday. Below we’ve run down several of the most notable:
- Perhaps most egregiously, in a now deleted Instagram post, Cawthorn celebrated crossing off a visit to the “Fuhrer’s” vacation home from his bucket list. Per Cawthorn, just like Hitler, he also spent the day laughing and sharing “such a good time,” at this glaring symbol of Hitler’s genocide:
- Up until yesterday morning, Cawthorn followed only 88 people on Twitter – a shorthand for “Heil Hitler” in white supremacist circles, as the letter “H” is the 8th letter in the alphabet.
- Cawthorn’s “real estate company” is called SPQR Holdings. SPQR, a motto of the ancient Roman Republic, has been adopted by white supremacist groups and was displayed on flags at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
- In a prominently featured picture of Cawthorn, a holster has the image of a Spartan soldier’s helmet, which is a symbol associated with right wing extremists, including the far-right Oath Keepers group – which the Anti-Defamation League calls “one of the largest anti-government extremist groups currently operating in the United States” and whose members have been arrested on explosives charges.
“With polls showing a tight race, Madison Cawthorn owes the people of North Carolina an immediate explanation for this pattern of white supremacist signals,” said DCCC Spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer. “Cawthorn might claim to be the next generation of Republican leadership, but with this behavior, the cause he seems to champion is offensive, inappropriate, and disgusting.”
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