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‘Elite’ charge earns challenger a smackdown from Edwards

U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards and challenger Christian Reagan squared off in a debate in Brasstown on Jan. 13.

By Bill Moss, Published: January 31, 2024

BRASSTOWN — Christian Reagan, the cowboy-hat wearing Texas transplant running for Congress, earned a smackdown from U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards when he tried to score debate points by casting the first-term incumbent as part of the “Washington elite.”

A mortgage broker from Hayesville who is challenging Edwards in the March 5 Republican primary for the 11^th Congressional District seat, Reagan said Edwards had done nothing to fix illegal migration over the southern border.

“You just said it was 8 million people that illegally crossed the border. It’s 10 million, congressman, in the last three years,” Reagan said during a debate in Brasstown on Jan. 13. “This country is in trouble because of people like this — the elite that represent Washington, D.C. We’ve got to change how we do things as a country, and we will never do it with people like this.”

Edwards was not having it.

“I need the gentleman from Smith County, Texas, to recognize there is nothing elite about Chuck Edwards,” the congressman from Flat Rock replied, his voice rising. “I was born over here in Haywood County. I got to watch my family’s lights turned out many times, I got to watch our car repossessed, I lived in mill housing, I lived in trailers and I’ve worked my tail off all my life like my mother and my father did. There is nothing elite about this person who has asked to go to Congress and represent you because I understand how hard people in these mountains work and what it takes to live the American dream. I totally reject anyone that thinks that I am elite. My wife and I once went and found 83 cents so that we could buy kerosene to keep our house warm through the night until I could get paid the next day. That is not elite.”

Reagan tried to recover by saying, “I never used the word elite.” He must have a short memory; he had uttered the phrase “the elite that represent Washington, D.C.” 1 minute and 41 seconds earlier.

The audience chuckled and someone shouted, “Yes you did.”

Chastened, the gentleman from Smith County, Texas, turned to Edwards the next time he had the floor and said, “Sir, I apologize if I called you elite.”