“He’s a hot mess,” Susan Newman, 53, a teacher from nearby Laurel Park who voted for Cawthorn two years ago, said in the parking lot of an Ingles grocery store. “I really don’t see him doing anything in the district — and he just keeps getting in trouble.”

That sentiment, echoed by several voters here who spoke to NBC News, suggests Cawthorn is in danger of getting the boot in Tuesday’s hotly contested Republican primary for the 11th District seat…

Cawthorn’s adversaries hope a perception has taken hold that he’s courted fame at the expense of doing the basic job of a congressman — from failing to show up to vote in Washington to ignoring requests to help constituents.

“What folks are concerned with here is they don’t feel that they have a voice in Washington, D.C., because our congressman has been jet-setting around the country, getting involved in other races, going to other events,” state Sen. Chuck Edwards, the most prominent of seven Republican challengers, said in an interview at the Miles River Restaurant here as Dolly Parton’s workaday “9 to 5” played in the background.