Who is Chuck Edwards? A look at the NC lawmaker under investigation
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Rep. Chuck Edwards is under investigation by the House Committee on Ethics.
- Edwards was sanctioned in April 2024 by the House Communications Standards Commission.
- Since taking office, Edwards has retained only two employees.
The public added a new section to Rep. Chuck Edwards’ Wikipedia entry that one might expect to see on one of his predecessors’ pages: “Controversies.”
Constituents of Edwards, 65, a Republican from Flat Rock, had reason to think he would bring to his congressional office a level of professionalism that had been lacking. He had a track record of government service and took steps to be in a position to help constituents.
But news leaked in April — and soon was confirmed — that Edwards faces an investigation by the House Committee on Ethics on whether he created a hostile work environment and sexually harassed women on his staff.
The Edwards news forms a pattern of three consecutive representatives from the same region whose alleged actions drew negative headlines.
But Edwards was supposed to be different.
Growing up Chuck
Internet archives capture how Edwards explained his childhood when he first ran for office.
He grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. He was born in Waynesville, 30 miles southwest of Asheville, and moved to Hendersonville when he was 12.
His mother was a waitress, his father a truck driver, his family Christian, and he said he wouldn’t realize their financial hardships until later in life.
Edwards attended West Henderson High School, where he wrestled and was on the football team.
He dreamed of becoming a forest ranger, a wildlife enforcement officer or serving in forest management.
McDonald’s owner
But at 16, the trajectory of Edwards’ life changed when he worked the grill at a local McDonald’s.
Within three years, Edwards was encouraged to join McDonald’s corporate management team. He did, and also took part-time classes for business at Blue Ridge Community College.
Eight years later, he was promoted to technology coordinator over 150 of the company’s restaurants and in 1989, promoted again to oversee the total budget, sales development and operations for the Western North Carolina and Spartanburg, South Carolina, restaurants.
He continued to work his way up in the company, eventually helping to open more than 100 franchises.
And then, in 1998, he opened his own franchise in Hendersonville.
As he expanded the franchises he personally owned, he also served on boards and organizations, including the Henderson County Chamber of Commerce, the Henderson Rotary Club, Boy Scouts of America, the Franchisee Government Relations Committee, Hendersonville’s Partners for Economic Progress and the Community Foundation of Henderson County.
He also served on government boards and committees including the City of Hendersonville Business Advisory Committee and the Henderson County Planning Board.
Joining the Senate
So when Sen. Tom Apodaca, a powerful Republican lawmaker from Hendersonville who oversaw the Rules Committee, chose to step down early in July 2016, he endorsed Edwards for the role.
“I think it will be good for Chuck Edwards,” Apodaca told the Hendersonville Lightning. “I hope the executive committee appoints him. He’ll be able to get to know the legislature. The way he studies and the questions he asks he’ll keep the staff very busy.”
Apodaca did not respond to a request for comment from McClatchy for this article.
Under North Carolina state law, when a vacancy occurs in the state Senate, the local executive committee of the political party that the senator was affiliated with chooses someone to recommend to the governor to replace him or her.
At the time, Pat McCrory, a Republican from Charlotte, served as governor and took the local party up on their recommendation that Edwards fill Apodaca’s vacancy. It was August 2016, and this gave Edwards the upper hand, as the incumbent, in the upcoming election and allowed Apodaca to begin his cooling-off period to become a lobbyist by the start of the next session.
In the Senate, Edwards served on 17 committees and chaired five. He prioritized policies on topics like immigration, gun rights and small businesses.
His successes in the Senate led to rumors that he might succeed Rep. Mark Meadows in Congress. Meadows, a Republican from Cashiers, had represented the 11th Congressional District since 2013.
In Meadows’ fourth term, he announced he would not seek reelection and would resign in March 2020 to become President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.
Political watchers wondered if Edwards would run for Meadows’ vacant seat. But having just begun his third term, Edwards opted against it, and Madison Cawthorn, a then-25-year-old from Hendersonville, won the seat.
Quickly in Cawthorn’s first term, he proved inexperienced.
First, he told lawmakers he was building a staff focused on communications over legislation, Time Magazine reported then.
Then he found himself mired in a series of scandals he couldn’t overcome, including bringing a weapon to an airport and a school property, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a thug” and praising Putin.
Cawthorn’s actions and statements drew the ire of Sen. Thom Tilllis, and he began actively campaigning against the Western North Carolina congressman.
In November 2021, Edwards announced he would run against Cawthorn and Tillis successfully threw his support behind him.
“Republicans chose Chuck Edwards tonight because he is the embodiment of mountain values who will fight for them every single day in Congress with honor and integrity,” Tillis wrote in a news release following Edwards’ win.
Tillis did not respond to a request for comment sent to his team on what stood out to him about Edwards.
By November, Edwards faced Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara to replace Cawthorn in Congress. The district, at the time, leaned Republican by double digits. But with Asheville, a heavily Democratic area, in the middle of the district, a win for Edwards wasn’t a sure bet.
But he pulled it off.
Entering Congress
On Jan. 7, 2023, Edwards was sworn into Congress.
He staffed his office with a chief of staff and legislative director who had 40 years of Capitol Hill experience between them.
He turned the office’s focus back to constituent services and staffed the district offices with people who knew the region.
Before being officially sworn in, Edwards would vote 15 times before Republicans would settle on Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, as the House speaker.
By October, it would take just one vote to oust him.
Members would then learn what would happen when a speaker is ousted, a historic first.
Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican from Lincoln County, would serve as interim speaker and lead a three-week process to select Rep. Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, as speaker.
In 2024, Edwards found himself in trouble for using official congressional mail, known as franking, to campaign against President Joe Biden.
In April 2024, the House Communications Standards Commission said it would issue unspecified sanctions against Edwards for violating House communications rules.
Edwards defended himself, at the time, saying, “I did not go to Washington to make nice with Joe Biden, so while I’ll do a better job of crossing my ‘i’s and dotting my ‘t’s, I will not be robbed of my First Amendment rights by this hyper-partisan complaint, nor deterred from communicating with my constituents.”
Staff turnover
A year later, McClatchy began looking into large staff turnover in Edwards’ office. The chief of staff and legislative director left.
The history of Edwards’ staff changes can be found both on Legistorm, a subscription service, and Linkedin.
“Going into my second term, I decided to restructure the team to meet the current needs of Western North Carolina following Hurricane Helene and with my new leadership role on the House Appropriations Committee,” Edwards told McClatchy in a written statement April 28, 2025.
Helene struck Western North Carolina in September 2024, causing widespread damage and at least 108 deaths. Edwards’ constituents are still digging out of the damage and rebuilding.
In May 2025, Edwards appeared at a Rotary Club meeting in Asheville, scheduled to speak on Helene relief.
But a Rotarian who attended the event said that his speech included defending Trump’s administration, tariffs and cuts to federal agencies. The man, Guy Gooder, told McClatchy at the time that Edwards had insulted Rotarians’ intelligence and the programs they partner with.
Gooder told McClatchy that as Edwards walked to the back of the room, another Rotarian muttered that his speech was “a load of B.S.” In response, Edwards struck the man with a clipboard, said Gooder, who heard but did not see the incident.
Asheville Police confirmed they were called to a downtown hotel to investigate a report of a disturbance by a member of Congress, but charges were not filed.
As months passed, and Edwards continued to navigate Helene relief, his staff continued to leave his office. The job of legislative director turned over a second time and was replaced. A deputy chief of staff left, and Legistorm does not show a replacement.
Edwards has retained two employees for the entirety of his two terms in office: his district director and his senior caseworker.
Ethics investigation
Now Edwards is under investigation for how he treated his staff.
Multiple news outlets including Axios and NOTUS reported that Edwards is accused of traveling to Las Vegas with an employee 40 years his junior; sending her a three-page letter saying she had “written a complex chapter in my heart” and a puzzle she had to complete to invite her to an Adam Sandler comedy show; and buying one employee jewelry and another a designer bag.
Edwards is one of several members of Congress being investigated over allegations of sexual harassment of staff. Those included Rep. Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez, who both resigned from office.
On April 20, prior to its investigation of Edwards, the ethics committee released a list of 28 members the committee has investigated since 1979 for sexual misconduct. Three days later, NOTUS reported and McClatchy confirmed that the committee had also investigated Democratic Rep. Alma Adams of Charlotte over a relationship with a staffer; Adams said the investigation found no violations and was closed.
The investigation into Edwards caused the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics to change the 11th Congressional District ranking from “likely Republican” to the more narrowly divided “leans Republican.”
Edwards faces Jamie Ager, a Democrat from Fairview and a fourth-generation farmer whose brother, father and grandfather served in politics.
Edwards’ district voted for Trump by a margin of roughly 10 points.
