Tricia Cotham Targeted In Road Rage Attack

According to the "Local Paper" State Representative Tricia Cotham said an enraged woman screamed vulgarities at her mother and a son and swerved her car at them in a politically motivated case of road rage this week. 

The woman raised her middle finger at Cotham’s child and kept honking her horn as she swerved at them, the Mecklenburg County Republican said on Facebook Saturday. “She tried to run my family off the road and get them to hit her,” Cotham said, including a picture in her post of the angry driver’s Toyota Avalon and its license plate number. 

In the same Facebook post Saturday afternoon, Cotham included what she called unrelated, harassing comments by someone using a fake Facebook account under the pseudonym Moots Oots.

“Tricia Cotham’s children deserve know how she is a liar,” read the grammatically incorrect Moots Oots post. “She is a puppet that has destroyed democracy for her district.” The reference may have been in reaction to Cotham’s historic April 5 switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, which gave the GOP supermajority voting power in the General Assembly. 

Cotham replied to Moots Oots on Facebook: “Harassing and targeting my family is WRONG. You don’t like me, you come for me. ME! This post is just another example of the evil behavior we endure. 

So, ‘Moots,’ hiding behind a fake account? Bless.” Cotham’s mother is Pat Cotham, a Democratic Mecklenburg County at-large commissioner. The Cothams didn’t immediately return messages from "the local paper" on Saturday.

Tricia Cotham didn’t say on Facebook if she filed a police incident report in either case. She also didn’t name the road where her mom and child encountered the angry woman or how her mom managed to avoid running off the road. 

She also did not identify the son. On “X,” formerly Twitter, on Saturday, ex-NC GOP Chairman Dallas Woodhouse said Pat Cotham’s car “had the Cotham name on it and (the) driver apparently thought is was @triciacotham.” 

“This is so incredibly dangerous and disgusting,” said Woodhouse, now N.C. executive director of the conservative group American Majority.

Cedar's Take: This is a good time to remind the local demonicarts that North Carolina is a "Castle Doctrine" State:

If an intruder invades a person's space, the property owner can legally use deadly force against him or her, with no legal obligation to back down. This right extends not only to a person's home but also his or her vehicle and workplace under North Carolina law.

The same also applies to self defense in South Carolina. 

You might get away with a hard brake check but if you try to ram my car I will protect myself, my family and my children. I'd also advise not trying to open someone's car door or reach inside an open car window. 

Cotham switched political affiliations earlier this year. The life long democrat who on occasion voted against the party line had finally had enough of the endless vitriol hate and endless personal attacks. The majority in her district are moderates who voted for Republican Pat McCrory and then voted against him, they also voted for Trump in 2016 but voted for Biden in 2020. 

Remains up for debate if Cotham will try to retain her state senate seat or perhaps a run at something bigger.

As for Pat Cotham she's been a strong democrat who has also occasionally rocked the boat with a common sense approach to local politics. She has always been approachable and relentlessly engaged. You can often find her sitting alone at a fellow citizen's funeral usually unnoticed, often paying her respects to someone who she only knew as a fellow Charlottean.