Republican creep drops out

No, not that one:

On Monday night, Jim Fulton, the Republican Party chair in Buncombe County, N.C., received a call from an aide for Representative Chuck Edwards, whose re-election campaign was spiraling after the House Ethics Committee documented his troubling conduct toward two young female aides.

Mr. Fulton said he was told that evening it was still “full steam ahead.” He was given campaign signage to put up.

Then at 3:32 a.m. on Wednesday, Mr. Edwards announced he was dropping out.

“There was already a lot of work to do” to get Mr. Edwards back on track, Mr. Fulton said Wednesday. “Now,” he added, “there’s a lot more.”

Even without scandal, the race in western North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District had turned competitive. Jamie Ager, the Democratic candidate, had been making hay of his background as a farmer with deep roots in a region that has been reliably red for decades but has shifted left in recent election cycles.

Now, just over 12 weeks before Election Day, Republicans are scrambling to find a candidate. The Republican executive committee of North Carolina’s 11th district — which includes dozens of members, such as county party chairs — will meet next Monday to pick a new nominee.

This guy, while not “Max Miller” bad, is a real piece of work:

The report’s findings confirmed several anecdotes previously reported by Axios, including handwritten correspondence, personal gifts, drinking outings, casino trips, and cited them as supporting evidence for its findings.

• Edwards wrote one staffer a flattering poem that he read aloud — while choking up and becoming teary-eyed — at her office-wide going-away party, Axios previously reported, and the Ethics Committee found.
• “Several staffers present testified that they felt uncomfortable, and Representative Edwards acknowledged in his own testimony that he could tell the staff felt uncomfortable,” the report stated.

He also told that staffer that she had “written a complex chapter in my heart” shortly before she was set to leave his office in a three-page handwritten letter previously reported by Axios.

• When asked by the Ethics Committee if this letter was meant to be romantic, Representative Edwards responded: “No . . . . It was only to imply that we had a relationship on so many different levels – on a congressional level, on a professional level, on a friendship level, on a helping-one-another-out-with-our-chores-and-responsibility level.”
• Edwards gave the staffer a custom puzzle revealing an image of Adam Sandler with a handwritten note inviting her to attend one of Sandler’s comedy shows with him, Axios previously reported.
• Ethics wrote that Edwards mailed the puzzle with a handwritten invitation to “dinner beforehand, or a drink or dessert afterwards.”

During the fall 2025 government shutdown, Edwards vacationed with the then-former staffer in Las Vegas, where he arranged for flowers to be waiting in her Bellagio hotel room, Axios previously reported. The female staffer told Edwards the flowers made her uncomfortable, according to Axios’ previous reporting and testimony to the Ethics Committee.

• The staffer told the committee that “she ultimately felt pressured to go in part because of his persistence and in part because Representative Edwards continued to have influence over her career in another public service role.”
• Edwards testified that “he did not want his Scheduler to be aware of who he was with, not for the first time, as ‘[i]t would have looked suspicious’ because ‘rumors swirled around’ and ‘it’s not any of [his staff’s] business.'”

The Ethics Committee wrote in its report that both staffers “received numerous gifts from Representative Edwards, including jewelry totaling over $1,000, designer purses, guns, shoes, flowers, a laptop and cell phone, KitchenAid mixer, a robotic vacuum, vacations, tickets to performances, and one-on-one dinners.”

“House member going to Vegas with the aide he’s sexually harassing during a government shutdown” pretty much encapsulates Republican governance in the 21st century.