13 possible replacements for Chuck Edwards

Republicans will choose a new nominee Monday. Here are the names to watch.

Good luck getting a political person in Western North Carolina to answer the phone over the next five days.

The race to replace Congressman Chuck Edwards on the ballot is about to become a feeding frenzy.

Anyone with a stake in Republican politics in the mountains will spend the next five days trading names, counting votes and deciding whether to make a run at Congress. The N.C. Republican Party’s 11th Congressional District Executive Committee already had a meeting scheduled for Aug. 10. Members now plan to use it to choose Edwards’s replacement.

It’s an incredibly thin tightrope to find somebody who can both please party activists who dominate committees like this while also being electable in a sprint to November. I’m going to go deeper on the dynamics there later.

For now, here are a handful of Republicans who merit consideration, along with the case for and against each. Before you tell me I’m an idiot: I do not pretend to know the internal pecking order of the mountain GOP, but thes…