At age 31, Addison McDowell is one of the youngest members of Congress. It wasn’t so long ago that the North Carolina Republican was starting out as an intern.
“It was much better than writing essays in college. That was real-world experience that paid off,” he says of his internship with Rep. Richard Hudson, a fellow Kappa Alpha Order member.
Next he worked as a campaign and district staffer for now-Sen. Ted Budd. After spending a few years as a lobbyist, McDowell landed Donald Trump’s endorsement over bigger names in a crowded primary, surprising many observers. He won in the newly redrawn 6th District as the open seat moved from blue to red.
So far in his first term, McDowell has proposed renaming Dulles Airport after Trump, backed bipartisan bills aimed at overdose prevention and used his first floor speech to honor his younger brother Luke, whose death from fentanyl drove his run for office.
He remembers getting the news while staffing a campaign event for Budd, who comforted him. “That moment is etched into my brain because it was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, but the way he was there for me, that’s more than politics.”
In an interview with Roll Call earlier this month, McDowell talked about his brother, hunting pheasants with Donald Trump Jr. and learning how to treat his former mentors as colleagues.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q: What’s your earliest memory of politics, or being aware of politics?
A: My dad is a pastor, and he had a sheriff in his church, Mr. Jimmy Parker Ferguson. He was a sheriff in Columbus County, and I remember riding around in the car with my dad to put out yard signs when I was a really little kid.
I’m actually named after him. My middle name is Parker, and the reason I put my middle initial in my signature and on my office door is a nod to him.
Q: Both your parents are pastors. What was that like growing up?
A: Mom is in the Methodist Church, and dad in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. They wanted our house to be somewhere we could openly talk about our faith, politics and sports. I realized I like to have lively discussions, and my parents taught me how to do that in a way that’s firm but respectful. That has gone a long way.
Q: How did you get your internship with Hudson?
A: He and I are fraternity brothers. He used to be president of the fraternity I was in at UNC Charlotte, and so you’ve got a bunch of guys in Kappa Alpha that all looked up to him. I was a political science major, and they wound up hiring me to work on the campaign. I knocked on doors, and after that I interned in his district office.
The congressman loves NASCAR, which so do I, and the district at the time had Charlotte Motor Speedway in it. So that was always cool to go there, but what really stands out are the people who would come into the office that we could help. Some of those now are my constituents.
Q: Next you worked on Budd’s House campaign and then as a district staffer. What sticks with you?
A: Watching him interact with folks that didn’t necessarily agree with him was an eye-opening experience, because he is among the best. He was an owner of a gun store, and so it was not a secret where he stood on the Second Amendment, but he would meet with groups of people very adamantly opposed to it. His goal was, “When they leave, they may disagree with me, but they’re gonna say, ‘That’s a really nice man.’”
Q: You’ve talked a lot about your younger brother, who died because of fentanyl. You got a phone call at one of Budd’s campaign events in 2016.
A: When I got that news, [Budd] was there with me, and I’ll never forget that. It was like 10 days before he got elected to Congress, and he stopped everything to care for me. And I’ve heard from other folks in our district who experienced similar loss, that he cared for them too.
That moment is etched into my brain because it was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, but the way he was there for me, that’s more than politics, that’s just on a human level, and I carry that with me in my service now.
My little brother, he’s the reason I did this, because someone’s legacy isn’t dead until you say their name the last time. I felt insulted by the way politicians in Washington had handled our border and the fentanyl crisis, and that was the driver for me to say, “All right, I’m gonna pivot and run for the seat. I am going to be ruthless in my pursuit to stop this poison from being in our streets.”
Q: How did you meet Donald Trump Jr., who helped you land his father’s endorsement over the likes of Bo Hines and ex-Rep. Mark Walker?
A: I was staffing then-candidate Budd at an event that Richard Childress hosts every year for the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, and Don Jr. was a guest there. That was the first time I met him, and then he came hunting in North Carolina and fell in love with it. He was a hunting friend, and we would talk about sheep hunting, and not, “Hey, what do you think about this policy?” But that allowed him to get to know me as a person, and so when this seat was open and other people were encouraging me, that helped him see, “You know, I think he could do this.”
The last hunting trip was in Sturgis, in South Dakota, and it was white tail and mule deer and pheasants. You don’t get to hunt a ton as a congressman, too busy, but at heart I’m just a redneck and I want to go hunting.
Q: Do you stay in touch with anyone from your staffing days?
A: Absolutely. My chief of staff was the legislative director for Sen. Budd in his House office. And everybody else, we keep in touch. It’s a coaching tree, like the New England Patriots. You go down the list of people and there are just tentacles that go everywhere.
The coolest part for me is that my former bosses are now my colleagues, and they’re two men I respect. Being able to follow in Ted’s footsteps in a district that is very similar to the one he represented, it’s just not something I envisioned would happen when I was picking him up from the airport or his house at 3 a.m. as a staffer.
The post ‘Etched into my brain’: Addison McDowell on the fentanyl tragedy that led him to Congress appeared first on Roll Call.
