Republican hopeful Madison Cawthorn on Thursday changed language on a campaign site that accused a reporter of working “for non-white males, like Cory Booker, who aims to ruin white males running for office.”
Mr. Cawthorn, the GOP nominee in next month’s election to represent North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, scrubbed the language from an attack site his campaign launched recently.
While the attack site centers around Morris “Moe” Davis, the Democratic nominee in the race, the line Mr. Cawthorn later yanked was about Tom Fiedler, a journalist who has written about his rival.
“He quit his academia job in Boston to work for non-white males, like Cory Booker, who aims to ruin white males running for office,” the attack site said about Mr. Fiedler, a Pulitzer Prize winner.
The sentence was later revised to remove the references to race and Mr. Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who is currently one of three Black lawmakers serving in the U.S. Senate and the ninth ever elected.
Instead, the page on the attack site now claims Mr. Fiedler “quit his academia job in Boston to become a political operative and is an unapologetic defender of left-wing identity politics.”
Mr. Davis, a retired Army colonel and former military prosecutor, called the original sentence that was scrubbed from the attack site “blatantly racist” and Mr. Cawthorn “unfit for public office.”
He also said that Mr. Fiedler, a former dean of Boston University’s College of Communication and political reporter for the Miami Herald, has “no connection” to his Democratic campaign.
The language on the attack site was changed shortly after it was first reported by The Bulkwark website.
Mr. Cawthorn said in a statement later Thursday that he edited the language on the site because his syntax was “unclear” and wrongly implied he was criticizing Mr. Booker rather than Mr. Fiedler.
In the statement, Mr. Cawthorn said he considered Mr. Fiedler “more of a political operative than a journalist” and called him “an unapologetic defender of left-wing identity politics.”
“I also hope we can lower the temperature on racial rhetoric in this country,” he said in the statement.
Reached by email, Mr. Fiedler said he is in no way advocating for Mr. Davis, and he has not provided any support to his Democratic campaign.
“I am a journalist covering a campaign and make every effort to be accurate and ethical in my reporting,” Mr. Fiedler told The Washington Times. “If Mr. Cawthorn can point out any errors that I have made, I stand ready to correct them with apologies.”
Mr. Davis, 62, and Mr. Cawthorn, 25, are vying for a role in the House of Representatives last held by Mark R. Meadows, a Republican who resigned in March to become the White House chief of staff.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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