Madison Cawthorn says his 'service as a husband' kept him from voting on bills

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) said on Thursday that he has missed more votes than any other freshman member of Congress because he chose to go on honeymoon with his wife when the votes were held.

A report from Axios showed that Cawthorn has missed 16.2% of the votes in the current session of Congress, three percentage points more than the next closest member, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA).

Cawthorn has missed more than five times the number of votes as the highest-listed Democrat, Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, who has missed 2.82% of votes.

Cawthorn told the conservative network Real America’s Voice that he missed his votes due to his “service as a husband.”

“I just got married about seven weeks ago and so my wife and I, we went on our honeymoon, but during that time, I missed 15 votes in one week because that’s when they had the votes pile up,” said Cawthorn.

Cawthorn further excused his absenteeism by claiming that “every single vote that came up” while he was gone “was Democrat garbage, so I was happy to be able to not actually vote on those.”

According to the official congressional calendar released by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Congress was not in session for the entire week (April 4-9) before Cawthorn took his honeymoon (April 13-16).

The House will also not be in session for the first week of June, the first week of July, and for the entire month of August, times Cawthorn could have taken his vacation without missing votes.

In February, Cawthorn filed a letter with the House Clerk, claiming he could not attend a congressional session due to the coronavirus pandemic and would allow another Republican to cast a proxy vote on his behalf.

But in reality, Cawthorn attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida and gave a speech attacking Democrats.

During the pandemic in July 2020, Cawthorn chided Democrats, tweeting, “Leaders show up no matter how uncertain the times are. The Democrats are cowards for hiding and not showing up to work. I guess we can label them as ‘Nonessential personnel’?”

From the May 20 edition of Real America’s Voice’s “The Water Cooler”:

DAVID BRODY, host: Mainstream media loves to piggyback on this, and your name came up the other day. They look to slam you over the fact that basically, as a freshman, you have this voting record that had the largest percentage of missed votes.

 

What do you say to that report that’s out there?

 

MADISON CAWTHORN: To that, I really laugh, it just shows how exactly the Democrats feel about the nuclear family in America right now.

 

I will tell you, I was doing the only thing that I find more important than my service here in Congress. And that was my service as a husband. I just got married about seven weeks ago, and so my wife and I, we went on our honeymoon but during that time, I missed 15 votes in one week just because that’s when they had the votes pile up.

 

And I’ll tell you, you know, every single vote that came up, it was some Democrat garbage, so I was happy to be able to not have to actually vote on those, because they’re eliminating our voices and aren’t allowing us to be able to debate on the House floor.

 

And I’ll tell you, if I had to choose between voting with Nancy Pelosi or spending time with my beautiful wife, I’ll choose Christine every time.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.