Chuck Edwards was supposed to be the safe choice.
“He is the embodiment of mountain values who will fight for them every single day in Congress with honor and integrity,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) said in May 2022, after Edwards ousted a controversial one-term incumbent.
Four years later the North Carolina Republican faced a bipartisan rebuke from the House Ethics Committee, which recommended a rare censure motion for inappropriate behavior with young female staff.
“It’s going to be problematic for his campaign,” Tillis told reporters Monday evening.
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A little after 3 a.m. Wednesday, Edwards dropped out of his reelection bid, leaving state Republican officials scramblingto find a replacement candidate.
Edwards is one of several Republican men in the House who face allegations that have put what should be reasonably safe districts in political jeopardy.
Reps. Max Miller (R-Ohio) and Cory Mills (R-Florida) are also under investigation by the Ethics Committee for, among other allegations, assaulting a woman (Mills) and domestic violence (Miller). Tony Gonzales, a three-term Republican from South Texas, resigned earlier this year after admitting to an affair with a staffer who later committed suicide. He was headed to likely defeat in a primary runoff to Brandon Herrera, who is now facing questions about demeaning comments he has posted about women.
In each instance, the lawmakers denied the allegations and, at least initially, asserted they would remain in their reelection campaigns. Republicans, already on the defensive amid President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity, must now devote resources to defending red seats that shouldn’t be on the radar as competitive.
In 2024, Trump won all four of these districts by wide margins, ranging from almost 10 percentage points to 15 points. In the last 2024 analysis by The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter, none of these seats appeared on the chart of the roughly 70 most competitive House races in the country.
Now, all four are ranked among the three dozen toughest races for Republicans to defend in November.
Walter, the Cook report’s editor-in-chief, compared the current environment to the 2006 midterms,when Republicans lost 30 seats and the majority as President George W. Bush was mired in the Iraq war with terrible approval ratings.
“This year feels like déjà vu. … In both years: Unpopular war, Members mired in sex scandals,” she wrote.
In past midterm elections, however, these ethics-infused defeats did not tip the balance of power in the House, as the waves were so high that the majority party was largely doomed. But through mid-decade redistricting and a huge financial edge, today’s House Republicans have the type of political flood insurance their predecessors lacked.
They might be able to use these advantages to hold the majority by the narrowest of margins — unless several of these scandal-plagued seats fall to Democrats.
In 2006, Democrats padded their new majority by claiming a handful of seats in which Republican incumbents faced unique allegations.
Don Sherwood (R-Pennsylvania), who had won his previous two races with more than 80 percent of the vote, lost his race amid allegations that he had assaulted a mistress. John Sweeney (R-New York), a onetime rising star who had won his previous three races with more than 65 percent, lost after a report about a 911 call from his wife alleging an assault.
Mark Foley (R-Florida), who had won his previous two races by more than 35 percentage points each, resigned just weeks before the 2006 election amid an ethics investigation into sexually explicit conversations with teenage House pages, handing the seat to Democrats.
A few safe Republicans faced their own corruption investigations, including Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the House majority leader, and Bob Ney (R-Ohio), chair of the House Administration Committee. Both resigned midterm, and Republicans couldn’t hold on to those seats.
In 2010, Democrats lost their majority in a historic 63-seat loss that mostly centered around high unemployment and a conservative revolt against big government spending. But Bob Etheridge (D-North Carolina), who had won four straight races with more than 65 percent of the vote, stumbled, almost literally, into political trouble. A few young Republican operatives caught him leaving an evening fundraiser and, on video, asked about his policy positions.
Etheridge lunged toward them, grabbing one of them and repeatedly asked, “Who are you, who are you?” A neophyte opponent latched onto the viral video and gained attention, narrowly defeating him by 1 percentage point that fall.
In 2018, the political wave that swept Democrats back into power was foretold by Tim Murphy (R-Pennsylvania), who was so popular as a conservative anti-abortion Republican that Democrats did not field an opponent in his last two re-elections. But Murphy resigned in late 2017 after admitting to an affairwith a woman who accused him of pressuring her to get an abortion.
In early 2018, despite the district’s deep conservative lean, Conor Lamb, the Democratic candidate, won the special election to replace Murphy and established a playbook for other Democrats in tough districts for distancing themselves from the national party brand — ending with a more than 40-seat gain that November for Democrats.
In each of these cases, it’s a relatively safe bet that had the incumbent remained free of ethical challenges — or had they given their party more time to find an appropriate replacement — the party in power would have won those races.
That’s why Republicans this year pushed Gonzales to resign — and why some have tried to push Edwards and Miller to remove themselves from the November ballot.
And in Florida, Republican Reps. Mike Haridopolos and Anna Paulina Luna took the rare move to oppose an incumbent in their delegation, siding against Millsahead of the primary later this month.
“We need leaders in Congress who serve with integrity, energy, and an unwavering commitment to the people who sent them there,” the two Republicans wrote.
In addition to “other allegations,” the Ethics Committee is also reviewing the circumstances involving a second woman who got a restraining order against Mills last fall. But Trump has endorsed Mills, whose opposition could split among several Republican challengers.
Democrats believe Bale Dalton, a Navy veteran and former NASA official, provides the right contrast in November if Mills wins the nomination later this month.
Democrats are particularly bullish on defeating Miller, whose ex-father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), said that Miller posed such a danger that he moved his wife, daughter and granddaughter out of state to protect them.
“The allegations here are horrible, and it’s really disqualifying behavior,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Washington), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Scott MacFarlane Reports, an independent news organization covering Congress.
Miller, who won his last election by 15 points, has defended himself in a series of media appearances that only further raised alarms. Ohio law could allow Republicans to replace Miller by Monday, but that only can occur if Miller willingly steps aside, a scenario he is publicly rejecting.
“No one has told me to get off the ballot, and that’s because they know I can win,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday.
Sometimes the replacement candidates come with their own political baggage, as is the case in Texas. Herrera’s recent career as an edgy YouTuber, filled with comments some consider misogyny, does not create the type of distance from Gonzales’ actions that most Republicans would prefer.
On Thursday, the DCCC added the district to its “Red to Blue” list as a designated battleground, a move that Republicans believe ignores the strong conservative lean of the district.
“All they will buy is another expensive humiliation in November,” Christian Martinez, an official with the National Republican Congressional Committee, told The Texas Tribune.
Past speakers tried to deal swiftly with transgressions to limit the exposure other caucus members faced in having to defend rogue colleagues. Foley and Murphy were pushed out in a matter of weeks. Speaker Mike Johnson, however, has been more reluctant to use his moral megaphone to push members aside, in part because his single-digit majority needs every possible vote to succeed.
In Edwards case, four years ago he was the replacement candidate himself.
Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina) had a high-profile single term in the House, fueled by uncorroborated stories about his escape from a car crash and his bid to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Cawthorn alleged that many members of Congress attended parties with drugs and prostitutes, a story that lit up online and forced lawmakers to defend themselves against back home.
Led by Tillis, senior North Carolina Republicans rallied around Edwards, who made millions as a McDonald’s franchisee before serving six years in the state Senate. He was sold as the pure candidate, no controversy, narrowly defeating the young far-right ideologue in the May 2022 primary.
In its report released Monday, the Ethics Committee found that over several years Edwards showered two younger female aides with gifts, hand-written letters and other mementos that were sexual in nature.
“We seem to have a fondness for many of the same things,” he wrote to one aide. “Even where we do not, I’ll enjoy the adventure alongside you!”
His adventure ended Wednesday with his withdrawal from the election, and now North Carolina’s Republican leaders are searching for a new candidate. But Edwards will complete his current term, a sign of how much Johnson still needs his vote.
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