Adam Smith is no stranger to service. He spent 17 years in the United State Army and later ran one of the largest post-Helene nonprofits: Savage Freedom Relief Operations.
The work of his group, which included helicopters delivering aid to communities otherwise inaccessible, earned him a spot next to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump when he made a campaign stop in Western North Carolina in October 2024.
Trump said what Smith was doing was an “amazing act of citizenship and service.”
Now Smith, who describes himself as a political outsider, wants to unseat Trump-endorsed incumbent Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. The desire to run for public office came after what Smith saw as a lack of action from Edwards during the storm.
“All I ever saw with him was, [him] in his pristinely clean clothes with his hands in his pockets,” Smith said.
In response, Edwards told BPR that his work after the storm helped the entire region. In January 2025, President Trump appointed Edwards to a task force to thoroughly review FEMA and provide recommendations on ways to improve it. Edwards released his recommendations last April.
“ The people of Western North Carolina know that for about the first 35 days following the storm, I had my jeans on. I had my muddy boots on and traveled thousands of miles around the district visiting folks that had lost everything,” Edwards said, adding he also worked to open lines of communication for the federal government’s disaster response.
“I brought the speaker of the house to see Western North Carolina for himself, the appropriations chair, the house majority leader, about 30 other members of Congress. I went on the house floor and argued for natural disaster funding that we continue to disperse today.”
The district Smith is hoping to represent is no stranger to political outsiders. In 2020, Madison Cawthorn, then-25 years old, won the seat, defeating a Trump-endorsed candidate along the way.
Still, defeating Edwards will be no small task.
“ It is a big, messy, expensive rural district in which to run for office. And so, what Adam Smith has to do is to just educate some people from his perspective as to what's happening. Remind them that he's the person running, and then convince them to show up and vote,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “Oh, and by the way, convince them to vote for somebody different than they did last cycle.”
Who is Adam Smith?
Smith was born and raised in Jeffersonville, Indiana. He followed a family tradition by joining the military when he was 17 years old. Both grandfathers had served, as well as an uncle.
He stayed in the army for 17 years, mostly serving as a Green Beret, until the end of President Barack Obama’s second term. Smith says the decision to leave was in part due to the frustration he felt with the Obama administration’s response to an attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi.
“ It was a disillusionment with how the administration functioned and operated, and there was no way that I was going to serve,” Smith said. “I thought [Hillary] Clinton was going to win. There was no way I was going to serve under her. There's absolutely zero, zero possibility.”
Smith moved to rural Kentucky with his then-fiance after leaving the army and entered a period which he describes as an “identity crisis.” That period ended in a failed suicide attempt.
“ I had no purpose because I gave my identity up to do my job. And I didn't have a mission. And so I decided that I was done with life,” he said.
Soon after, an old friend who also served in the military called Smith and offered him a job training law enforcement officers. Smith describes this time in his life as transformative and said it helped him realize his true identity.
“I believe in the constitution, I believe in the country. I believe in moral value. I believe in ethical value. I was raised on those principles by my family, that's what I believe in,” he said. “We can debate policy all day long, but that's what I believe in.”
Smith moved to Black Mountain in 2020 to be closer to his ex-wife and daughter. He started his own law enforcement training company: Savage Freedom Defense. He also works as a business consultant and has hosted several podcasts, including one about alien conspiracy theories.
Smith sees his campaign as another yet another mission to serve the public, despite his “extreme frustration” with politics and a view that politicians make up a “ slimy, dirty, scummy underbelly of national leadership.”
For Smith, the country and constitution need to be protected from what he called “ Marxist Communist ideology” being pushed by the political left.
“ I've seen what the atrocities of the world looks like. I've seen what third world countries operated by a tyrant look like. My fear is that the trajectory of our country is going that way,” he said. “I don't think it's going that way under this president. I think it's trending that direction with the ideology that continues to get spread around the country.“
Policies and priorities
Smith believes that politicians on both sides of the aisle too often have their own interests in mind, rather than the interests of the communities they represent. He said this gives him an advantage in a race against someone who has served in D.C. for two terms.
“ I think the people of Appalachia in general, they don't fit the mold. They don't fit the standard. There's a lot of independent thinkers out here,” he said.
Helping the people of Western North Carolina is top of mind for Smith. His recovery work during the storm shaped his view of how the complex and sometimes lengthy processes of the federal government can be streamlined.
“ FEMA has to be overhauled. It has to be completely overhauled. The way FEMA functions and operates is too bureaucratic,” he said. “We have to turn FEMA into a special operations unit for disaster relief in the United States. It should have three principal functions: immediate rescue and relief, midterm relief efforts with regards to stabilization and then the long-term effort.
For Smith, this long-term effort would come in the form of large grants to state and local governments, similar to how federal money was doled out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Outside of storm recovery, Smith said he wants to help dig the country out of debt. One solution Smith offered was to bring American money held in offshore accounts back to the country through an incentivized bond program.
Smith called the current immigration process “broken” and called for a more selective and streamlined process for legal immigration.
“The problem that we're facing in the United States is that there is a complete and utter lack of assimilation. There are foreign cultures that come into the United States that would rather bring their foreign culture and change the United States than coming to the United States, celebrating their culture by being also American,” he said. “If you don't have national pride and you don't believe in the founding principles of the United States, then you're not an American.”
“ And at the end of the day, it boils down to one thing: Come to the country legally, celebrate your culture, but do it while choosing to be American.”
Primary is an ‘uphill battle’
Voters’ reactions to Smith are mixed with some in favor of a fresh face with an aggressive attitude in Washington. For others, the only thing they know about Smith is that he ran a post-Helene nonprofit and served in the army.
Abbi Carson is a 24 year old from Buncombe County who does social media management for various Republican groups in the region, including Fix Buncombe. She hosted Smith on her podcast last December.
“I've seen a lot of people that are very enthusiastic about someone younger, someone new, someone fresh, that is not going to take it from the establishment, that is not going to take it from the left, that will go up there and will fight to the bitter end for the values that Western North Carolina holds so dear,” she told BPR News.
Still, unseating an incumbent is an uphill battle, according to Cooper, the political science professor at WCU.
“ Smith is a quality candidate in a lot of ways, but he has a real uphill battle,” he said. “Edwards may not be the most beloved member of Congress in America, but at the same time he’s had no major scandals.”
Cooper said Smith’s name recognition from his work after Helene will help him get the attention of some voters, but that is only part of the equation.
“ He really has to thread a pretty tight needle because he's got to convince a group of voters, the vast majority of whom voted for Chuck Edwards last time, that they should do something different,” he said.
