Madison Cawthorn

David Madison Cawthorn (born August 1, 1995) is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 11th congressional district from 2021 to 2023. Cawthorn became the first member of Congress born in the 1990s and describes himself as a Christian and a constitutional conservative. He is a member of the Republican Party. After working as a staffer for U.S. Representative Mark Meadows, Cawthorn was elected to succeed Meadows in 2020. His tenure was marked by various controversies, including allegations of insider trading, improper payments, bringing a handgun to an airport, and appearing in a leaked nude video. Cawthorn lost his reelection bid in the 2022 Republican primary to Chuck Edwards, who won the general election. Early life and education Cawthorn was born on August 1, 1995, in Asheville, North Carolina, to Priscilla and Roger Cawthorn. He was home-schooled in Hendersonville, North Carolina, through 12th grade, and played football with the Asheville Saints, a league that includes home-schooled high school students. As a teenager, he worked at a Chick-fil-A restaurant. In 2014, at age 18, Cawthorn was seriously injured while returning from a spring break trip to Florida. He was riding as a passenger in a BMW X3 SUV near Daytona Beach, Florida, when his friend Bradley Ledford fell asleep at the wheel. The vehicle crashed into a concrete barrier while Cawthorn's feet were on the dashboard. In a 2017 speech, Cawthorn said that Ledford left him "to die in a fiery tomb", which Ledford has disputed. Ledford said in a sworn deposition for insurance litigation that he pulled an unconscious Cawthorn from the wrecked vehicle immediately after getting out himself; in Cawthorn's deposition, he stated that he had "no memory from the accident". In the same 2017 speech, Cawthorn stated that he was "declared dead on the scene" of the accident, but the official accident report listed him as "incapacitated". The injuries from the accident left Cawthorn partially paralyzed, requiring the use of a wheelchair. He said he accrued $3 million in medical debt during his recovery; he received that amount as settlement from an insurance company, as well as other payments, and as of February 2021 was seeking $30 million more.