Tillis, in bid for second term in Senate, says he’s done what he said he would for NC
In late February 2019, two-plus years into the Trump administration and four-plus years into his first term in the U.S. Senate, Thom Tillis wrote in opposition to the president’s plan to take border wall money from other parts of the government.
His column, published in The Washington Post, did not object to President Donald Trump’s overall security vision, but criticized the plan as conflicting with the principle of separation of powers and setting a bad precedent.
The very public break was a bold stance for the North Carolina Republican.
It also set in motion the defining moment, perhaps, of Tillis’s first term in the Senate, and the broad contours of his current reelection bid against Democrat Cal Cunningham.
Weeks later, after some North Carolina conservatives publicly called for a Republican challenger, Tillis changed his stance and voted along with Trump to move money from the military to the president’s long-promised physical border wall.
Some $80 million of the $3.6 billion that was redirected to the wall came from North Carolina installations, though $33 million was for a Fort Bragg facility that had already been canceled. In announcing his reversal in the Senate, Tillis said “a lot has changed over the last three weeks.”
Today, he blames Democrats and leader Chuck Schumer for making the issue a political one about border security, instead of, as Tillis saw it, a conversation about separation of powers.
“When he made it a referendum on securing the border, it made me absolutely at peace,” Tillis said in a recent interview at the Capitol, about his change. “It also made me at peace knowing that North Carolina military installations have gotten $3 billion since I’ve been on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and I’ve fought for every single dollar of that.”
The episode opened Tillis, 60, to criticism from pundits and editorial boards — one of which called it an “Olympic gold flip flop” — and may have led to some residual hard feelings with the Trump base of the Republican Party.
But he never faced a serious GOP challenger as his largely self-funded opponent dropped out before the December 2019 filing deadline. Trump endorsed him before that, a move that went a long way in soothing some hard feelings with the type of voters who had booed Tillis at Trump rallies.
Tillis, who at times sought to distance himself from Trump’s controversial style, has fully backed and defended the president in the most high-profile battles since, including impeachment, the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and his reelection bid.
“I was there when he said he wanted Thom Tillis. That goes a long way with us,” said Diane Parnell, chairwoman of the Rockingham County GOP and one of the conservatives calling for a challenger in early 2019.
“He’s what your president has asked for, and that matters.”
But fidelity to Trump — real or perceived — is not without its drawbacks. Trump, who carried the state in 2016, is trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden in North Carolina polls and struggling with suburban voters.
North Carolina has voted for a presidential and Senate candidate of the same party in every presidential election since 1968.
Cunningham has made it one of his most consistent campaign attacks that Tillis is unable or unwilling to stand up to Trump.
“When he should have been speaking up, he hasn’t been, and this is further evidence of how he rolls over and doesn’t stand up, he caves in when partisan pressures are on,” Cunningham said after the candidates’ second debate on Sept. 22. “We know that he does not speak out when the president does things. He’s worried that the president may say something about him unflattering.”
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Tillis has been an outspoken proponent of mask wearing, imploring constituents to use face coverings in some of his more than 60 telephone town hall events. But twice, both times at White House events with Trump, Tillis was spotted without a mask.
The first was Trump’s acceptance speech, after which Tillis said he “fell short of my own standards.” The second was at a White House event on Sept. 26 for the nomination of Barrett where Tillis was maskless in photos taken indoors.
Tillis announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus on Oct. 2. Several others at the event, including Trump, tested positive as well. Tillis had only mild symptoms and has recovered from the virus that has killed more than 4,000 North Carolinians.
The positive test and Cunningham’s infidelity scandal were two late events in a race that is now the most expensive Senate campaign in U.S. history and could decide which party controls the chamber in January.
Cunningham has led in polling throughout the summer and into the fall. But the Tillis campaign and Republican allies have relentlessly attacked Cunningham over sexual texts he has admitted exchanging with a California woman who says they had an intimate encounter, and over his lack of transparency with the media and voters. They hope the scandal can keep the seat in the Republican column.
Republicans swept into control of the Senate in 2015, buoyed by a wave of victories in Democratic-held seats, including Tillis’ narrow win against incumbent Kay Hagan, in the sixth year of the Obama presidency. Republicans won a net of nine seats.
Tillis won by less than 50,000 votes, capping his political rise.
Not a typical path to power
Born Thomas Roland Tillis, Thom was one of six children in a family that moved around the Southeast throughout his childhood, with stops in Louisiana, Florida and Tennessee. Tillis said his parents, often living paycheck to paycheck, moved seven times before he turned 16.
He has leaned into those hardscrabble roots in this campaign — a departure from his 2014 campaign during which he emphasized his business background.
“I grew up in a trailer park, I got my four-year degree when I was 36 years old, and I worked my way up in business,” Tillis said in his opening remarks at the first debate.
He used a variation in all three televised debates and ran his first general election ads about his youth, crediting his work ethic to his late father.
“I take a little humility to the U.S. Senate, where it’s in short supply,” Tillis said in the ad.
Tillis planned to join the Air Force after high school, but a car accident ended those plans. Instead, he got a job as a warehouse clerk and started night school. He went to five different schools over 18 years to finish his college degree, he says on his campaign website.
Tillis became a consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and, when the company sold, eventually became a partner at IBM. He moved to the Charlotte area in 1998.
Tillis was married to his high school girlfriend twice and divorced twice when he was younger, a relationship that got renewed attention online after Cunningham’s infidelity came to light recently. He told The Charlotte Observer in 2014: “It was really sad. It was tough to go through.”
He and wife Susan have two children and two grandchildren. Tillis beams when he talks about them and has shared the story of his youngest granddaughter, born a few weeks premature in mid-August, on the campaign trail, including at an anti-abortion stop with Vice President Mike Pence in Raleigh in September.
Tillis won a seat on the Cornelius Board of Commissioners in 2003 because, the story goes, Tillis — a mountain bike enthusiast — wanted to create a mountain bike path. In 2006, he bested an unpopular Republican incumbent and won a seat in the state House. By 2008, he was in GOP leadership.
“Thom knows his own mind. From his first day, he has a plan. While other leaders react to things, Thom knew where he wanted to go, where he wanted to take the caucus. He was very intentional in his approach,” said Carolyn Justice, a former GOP state representative who served with Tillis. “He brought others along with him.”
Tillis spent the 2010 election cycle barnstorming the state, helping raise money for and holding town halls for Republican candidates. When Republicans took control of the House, Tillis was elected speaker.
“It was no question it would be him,” Justice said.
In 2012, Pat McCrory won the governor’s race and, for the first time in 100 years, Republicans controlled state government. They wasted little time implementing their agenda: cutting taxes, reducing regulation, implementing stringent voter ID laws, cutting unemployment benefits, not expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, changing the way roads were built and adding a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage to the ballot.
Republicans credit those policies with putting the state on stable financial footing and leading to job growth and a better business climate.
‘We made some tough decisions, regarding a very tough budget. Those decisions ended up being right,” McCrory said, specifically citing changes to unemployment benefits, in a telephone interview last month.
Some of the decisions have been fought over in this campaign, especially during the pandemic which produced spiking unemployment rates and additional uninsured residents. Cunningham has been critical of Tillis’ moves to make it harder for the governor to expand Medicaid. North Carolina is one of 12 states that has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
“This race is about, finally, expanding Medicaid in North Carolina which Thom Tillis blocked proudly, saying that he made it illegal for the governor to expand that coverage to the hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who could be using it today in the midst of this pandemic,” Cunningham said during an Oct. 19 “Protect Our Care” event.
Tillis said the state’s Medicaid system was failing when he became speaker, facing a massive shortfall and needed structural reforms. He said without those changes the state could not even consider expanding Medicaid. But Tillis remains an opponent of the Affordable Care Act.
“I consider him a pragmatic fiscal conservative who is a problem-solver,” McCrory said. “He has a good ability to form a coalition to make it happen.”
Tillis, as speaker, often drove up to the Executive Mansion in “the ugliest blue pickup truck you can imagine,” McCrory said, and pretended to order breakfast through the security speaker, a sign of his dry humor that flashes even in the Senate. Tillis called the color of his truck Carolina Panthers blue after his favorite team. McCrory disagreed that it was any sort of blue.
McCrory said Tillis implemented “a magnificent system” — green, yellow and red — for prioritizing legislation to bring to the House floor based on state need and what had a chance to pass. Much of McCrory’s final two years in office, without Tillis as speaker, were spent on the divisive House Bill 2 that required people in public buildings like schools to use the bathroom matching the gender on their birth certificate, the legislation which, most believe, helped lead to McCrory’s defeat in 2016.
“There are certain things that probably wouldn’t have met his red light-yellow light-green light test,” McCrory said without specifically mentioning HB2.
Tillis pursues similar goals in the Senate
Tillis’s agenda in the Senate has not been all that different from what he pursued as House speaker.
Working with a Black Democratic state lawmaker, he passed restitution for victims of forced sterilization in North Carolina, something Tillis often refers to when asked about racial justice. In the Senate, he sponsored a bill that Obama signed exempting those payments from hurting recipients’ status for federal benefits.
He voted for the 2017 Trump tax cuts that slashed corporate tax rates and lowered individual rates, a bill that Republicans credit with helping boost the economic recovery but Democrats blast as having benefited the wealthiest in the country while adding to the deficit.
He points to work on behalf of farmers, veterans and the military, particularly pay increases, work on housing issues and improvements to health care for veterans and the VA.
“I said I was going to come up here and fight for men and women in uniform, fight for veterans, fight for individuals, and I’ve done all that,” Tillis said.
In the campaign, Tillis — who wears a thin blue line pin on his suit lapel at the Capitol — has been outspoken in his support for law enforcement, assailing Democrats for considering defunding police or their support of protests that he says have led to an exodus of law enforcement officers and endangered their lives.
“’The thin blue line,’ all the people in America know what that means. It means that the police all across this nation are the difference between our safety and chaos,” Tillis said during a “Cops For Trump” event in Raleigh.
His highest profile work has been on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans have re-stocked the federal judiciary with Trump appointees. He pledged to vote for any Trump nominee before Barrett was announced, citing Trump’s public list. Tillis was an outspoken defender of Brett Kavanaugh during his messy Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
“It was democracy at its lowest,” he said. “I can’t believe what they did to Brett Kavanaugh.”
Cunningham describes Tillis as someone who places the interests of big donors, particularly in pharmaceuticals, above those of North Carolinians. In 2019, Tillis received more than $156,000 from political action committees tied to drug manufacturers, according to Kaiser Health News. That was tops in the Senate. Tillis chairs a subcommittee on intellectual property rights.
“The greatest predictor of where Thom Tillis is going to land is follow the money or follow the president’s Twitter account,” Cunningham said. “There’s clear evidence that when the going gets tough, he’s going to side with donors over veterans, side with the administration over North Carolinians.”
In another tight race
Now that he is backed by Trump and the Republicans trying to hold the Senate, it’s easy to forget that Tillis faced barbs from his own side.
Early in his tenure, Tillis had to downplay concerns that he was too moderate, that he was a Republican In Name Only, a RINO in political parlance.
He was late to Trump in 2016, endorsing fellow Sen. Marco Rubio in the primary. He co-sponsored a bill with a Democrat to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired. He disagreed on the need for a physical border wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, arguing that technology and personnel were more appropriate in certain areas.
He tried to re-purpose the RINO tag as “Republican In Need of Outcomes.”
“I’m tired of talking heads and pundits and people who have never produced a conservative outcome trying to tell me how to get a result,” Tillis said in 2017, defending his conservative record. “But the way I’ve accomplished that is by not being mad about being conservative. It’s by being productive and convincing Democrats to join with us on bills that make sense.”
Since early 2017, Tillis’ favorable rating has been below 40% and currently stands at 34%, the lowest in the Senate, according to Morning Consult, which tracks those ratings over time. Tillis won in 2014 with 49% of the vote. Tillis trailed in the majority of that year’s polls, too, though surveys showed an extremely tight race in the final weeks.
Throughout the three debates, Tillis worked to portray Cunningham as someone who would say anything to get elected and then do what Democratic leadership needs him to do. In the final weeks, he’s used the Cunningham scandal to say his challenger is not who he says he is.
“When I make a promise to the American people to act on something,” Tillis said, “I do it.”
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This story was originally published October 25, 2020 at 8:38 AM with the headline "Tillis, in bid for second term in Senate, says he’s done what he said he would for NC."
