Payback for 2020 primary talk? NC’s Tillis rips fellow Republican Walker’s Senate bid
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Old slights die hard.
Thom Tillis has not forgotten fellow Republican Mark Walker’s very public flirtation with a Senate primary challenge in 2020.
And now Tillis, who won reelection last year, is doing his best to make sure Walker — who ultimately passed on a challenge to Tillis — doesn’t become his Senate colleague in 2022 by dissing the former congressman’s record, fundraising and candidacy every chance he gets.
“To me, we’ve got to have the best athletes on the field. I want a majority back in the Senate,” Tillis said in a lengthy interview in his office with McClatchy on Wednesday.
Walker, a former three-term U.S. House member, is one of three prominent North Carolina Republicans running to replace retiring Sen. Richard Burr in 2022.
Tillis has openly and repeatedly talked down Walker’s campaign, while praising the race’s other top GOP contenders — former Gov. Pat McCrory and current U.S. Rep. Ted Budd.
“Maybe this is just payback for President Trump and I meeting a couple times in the Oval Office to discuss (Tillis’s) approach to representing the people as a senator,” Walker said Wednesday in an interview. “It seems to me that it comes from a very personal position rather than one that is politically driven.”
Tillis told CNN in late April that he had “no support for Mark Walker” and questioned his “body of work.” Tuesday, he told an NBC reporter that he wanted to make sure she was aware he left Walker off his list of viable candidates.
Later in the day, Tillis critiqued Walker’s fundraising — and praised McCrory and Budd. Walker, who declared for the race in December, raised $208,614 in the first three months of 2020.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, because of the lack of body of work and lack of name ID and lack of fundraising acumen, that the biggest indirect supporter of financial support for Walker will come from Chuck Schumer and Democrat interests that would like to see him win the primary, because I think just objectively he’s going to have the most difficult time being a credible general-election candidate,” Tillis said.
There’s no sign so far of Democrats intervening to back any of the GOP nominees, but such campaign tactics wouldn’t be foreign to North Carolina or to Tillis.
In the 2020 campaign, Republicans — through a Mitch McConnell-backed super PAC — spent more than $3 million to promote Democratic candidate Erica Smith in the primary against front-runner (and eventual nominee) Cal Cunningham. Tillis defeated Cunningham in the November general election.
Walker fired back at Tillis, calling him a “swamp sellout” and highlighting what he called flip-flops on supporting construction of a wall on the southern border and backing Trump.
“That’s his reputation now in North Carolina,” Walker said.
Tillis, a former North Carolina House speaker, has won two statewide races for U.S. Senate.
Payback
In February of 2019, Tillis penned an op-ed in The Washington Post opposing Trump’s national emergency declaration to secure funding for a border wall. Within a week, Walker was openly speculating about Tillis getting a primary challenger.
Tillis reversed course and voted with Trump.
In the spring, Walker met with Trump at the White House, in part to discuss a potential bid. He met with Tillis in the senator’s office.
“He lost his temper with me. How dare you talk with the President about running for my seat?’ I had to remind him this seat belonged to the people of North Carolina,” Walker said in an interview Wednesday. “After about 20, 30 minutes, he began to calm down.”
Walker met afterward with McConnell, the Senate’s Republican leader and a fierce supporter of GOP incumbents.
Walker announced in June 2019 that he would not run against Tillis. Later that year, he opted not to run for reelection after his House district was redrawn into a Democratic-leaning one by the state’s Republican legislature — and instead said he had Trump’s backing to pursue a Senate bid in 2022.
Walker met with Trump weeks ago in South Florida. The former president has not endorsed in the race.
Walker said he worked to help elect Republicans in North Carolina, including Tillis, in 2020. When Sen. Tim Scott, of South Carolina, campaigned with Tillis in Matthews on Oct. 17, Walker was in the audience. Scott said Walker and Tillis were two of the reasons he loved North Carolina. Scott endorsed Walker in the 2022 race.
It is not the first time Walker has drawn the ire of elected Republicans — with potentially negative effects.
In 2014, he announced a primary challenge to longtime U.S. Rep. Howard Coble. Coble eventually opted to retire, and Walker beat Coble-endorsed Phil Berger Jr. — the son of the then- and current state Senate leader — in a primary runoff for the Greensboro-area seat.
The district was one of two redrawn from Republican-leaning to Democratic-leaning before the 2020 election by state lawmakers.
Walker said that he’s been surprised by some of Tillis’s attacks, but said his support for McCrory and Budd “is really the gift that keeps on giving” to Walker among primary voters.
“For him to identify himself with Ted Budd and Pat McCrory says a lot. It says a lot that he would have a problem with me serving alongside of him and would prefer McCrory or Budd to be his companion senator. Why not Mark Walker? Why?” Walker said. “I think he’s concerned about the contrast of our styles.”
Tillis said McCrory “has proven he can win statewide” and that he has a reputation, body of work and base of financial support. He called Budd a friend, an “effective congressman” and someone with “a proven fundraising track record.”
Some of McCrory’s campaign staff worked for Tillis previously. Tillis and Budd campaigned together in the 2020 election.
Tillis insisted that the rebuke of Walker is not personal.
“I believe at the end of the day we have to pick the best candidate that can win a general election and that looks like, based on their track records, will be good solid legislators,” Tillis said. “So I’m looking at it purely through that lens. It’s nothing personal. I’ve got great relationships with people I had bad political, transactional relationships with.”
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Megaphone or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 4:38 PM.
