Sen. Thom Tillis is falling in line with Trump. Is it principles or campaign strategy?
Sen. Thom Tillis falling in line with President Donald Trump is not out of character.
It’s what he did in his previous election cycle.
And he foreshadowed it happening again just over two years ago when he sat on stage next to his 2020 campaign opponent, Cal Cunningham, at an event on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus, talking about political discourse and his ability to reach across the aisle and create bipartisan legislation.
“I get it if you’re a year out (from reelection), maybe you don’t get in a bipartisan game,” Tillis said, in November 2022. “But if you just got elected in this class, you’ve got six years and you’re not working on bipartisan legislation next year, then why are you here?”
Tillis is in the final two-year stretch of his second six-year term as a U.S. senator. He’s already launched his reelection campaign, and to win he must realign himself to his base and keep his head down through the Republican primary scheduled for March 3, 2026.
But Tillis has carved out a niche role for himself in the Senate by having the ability to work with Democrats — often to the ire of his state party — on bipartisan legislation that includes same-sex marriage, immigration and gun laws.
So at the start of this session, when Tillis fell in lockstep with Trump, supporting Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominations and accepting billionaire Elon Musk’s unfettered access to the government, it seemed to give people whiplash.
Even The Daily Show’s host, Jon Stewart, reacted to Tillis with, “It’s been a good run, America.”
Stewart’s comment came after he showed news clips highlighting congressional Republicans’ reactions, including a remark by Tillis to NOTUS reporters that Musk was running “afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense” by ignoring appropriation laws set by Congress but adding, “nobody should bellyache about that.”
Playing both sides
“One thing we saw from voters, we especially heard this from conservatives in 2020, is that Tillis is weak, that he was not willing to stand up for what he truly believed in, and he was not authentic, and he would try to have everything both ways, and in politics, you can’t,” said Morgan Jackson, a political strategist for Democrats. “I think that’s one of the big challenges he has is, again, trying to appease everyone. Actually what you do is the opposite: You make everyone mad.”
Those same phrases have been used in online reactions to Tillis’ recent votes and support of Trump’s nominations that have included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth.
Some question if Tillis’ recent support is a way to maintain Trump’s favor going into the 2026 election, and whether Tillis is afraid to step out of line, a notion his campaign consultant, Jordan Shaw, strongly rejects.
“The reality is, I think, a lot of folks in the media like to write this story,” Shaw said. “They certainly liked to write about it in Trump’s first four years because there’s this, I think, false narrative that questions like this can create division. The reality is that Sen. Tillis has been focused, these first several weeks of the Trump administration, on helping the president get a jump start on his agenda.”
He added that Trump and Tillis are aligned in their focus on topics ranging from tax reform to securing the border.
Supporting Trump
But Cunningham told McClatchy he studied Tillis’ career closely as he prepared to take him on in the 2020 election cycle. And he says supporting Trump now is exactly what Tillis needs to do if he wants to win.
Cunningham said his campaign data from their campaigns and Tillis’ history with Trump proves that.
“It’s an open secret that the most dangerous place in Washington is the light of day between Tillis and Trump,” Cunningham told McClatchy. “He has to be very concerned that with one tweet, he has unfixable problems with his own base.”
Former Rep. Mark Walker and former Gov. Pat McCrory experienced that in 2021 when Trump surprised them with an endorsement of now-Sen. Ted Budd in their race to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Burr. Trump’s endorsement changed the race and allowed Budd to capture the win.
Budd’s staff told McClatchy that the junior senator is supporting Tillis’ reelection campaign. Budd, who in the House was a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, has always had the favor of Trump and his supporters.
Becoming a senator
When Tillis first ran for the Senate, he faced off with the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Kay Hagan. At the time, Tillis was North Carolina’s speaker of the House.
The Tea Party was still the strongest conservative movement, and The New York Times deemed Tillis a “favorite of the party establishment.”
It was a midterm election, and President Barack Obama’s approval rating was declining. And as all candidates know, incumbent parties perform poorly in midterms.
Tillis defeated Hagan 49% to 47%.
Shaw said Democrats didn’t count on Tillis’ ability to beat Hagan, just as they hadn’t expected him to help engineer the breaking of a more than 100-year Democratic majority in the legislature, become speaker or find ways to override a Democratic governor’s veto.
“Thom Tillis is one of the most transformational, impactful figures in modern North Carolina political history,” Shaw said. “They’ve underestimated this man for 14 years.”
Tillis, the incumbent
In 2020, Tillis faced role reversals. He was the Republican incumbent, with a Republican president, Trump; and he was now defending his seat against Cunningham, a lawyer, veteran and former state senator.
Trump was nearing the end of his first term as president, and Tillis was no longer seen as a Republican insider.
He had criticized Trump during the 2016 election for sexual comments Trump made on a leaked Access Hollywood tape and tried to protect former FBI director Robert Mueller during his investigation of Trump and whether he colluded with Russia during that election.
“There’s a reason Tillis has been booed at every single Trump rally he’s ever been to,” Jackson said. “It’s because the base doesn’t think he really supports (Trump). And I think that what we’ve seen, in primarily the U.S. Senate ‘22 race, is that Trump’s endorsement means more than anything you can do politically or issue-wise. And I think that’s where Tillis continues to straddle that line, that ultimately, I think he thinks he’s trying to show independence, but at the end of the day, he’s just angering everyone.”
Cunningham led Tillis in most polls, though narrowly.
But toward the end of October 2020, Tillis got COVID, Cunningham was caught up in revelations about an affair, and both campaigns were sidelined.
Tillis ended up winning the race.
The Trump theory
Many people blame Cunningham’s scandal for the victory, but Cunningham points to Tillis’ allegiance to Trump throughout the election cycle.
And Cunningham, who is now friends with Tillis, said both campaigns were caught off guard by the number of Trump supporters who waited until Election Day to vote, per Trump’s request.
One of Tillis’ first loyalty tests happened just before the 2020 primary.
Tillis had to choose whether Trump should be impeached.
On Feb. 5, 2020, Tillis found Trump not guilty of abuse of power and contempt of Congress. Trump faced accusations that he withheld aid to Ukraine to get its leader to announce an investigation into his eventual opponent, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, and into potential election interference in the 2016 election. He also faced allegations that he prevented White House employees from both testifying and providing documents to Congress.
Cunningham remembers Tillis’ main opponent choosing to drop out, saying that the impeachment took all the oxygen out of the room.
“From the moment that impeachment moved forward, Tillis opposed impeachment and embraced the president wholeheartedly,” Cunningham said. “And he drove a very partisan line through there.”
Tillis’ loyalty to Trump paid off. Less than a month later, Tillis won the primary against three other Republicans, with 78% of the vote.
Cunningham said his campaign knew Tillis’ loyalty to Trump could make or break his reelection. When Cunningham first tested their name recognition with voters who supported both Trump and Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, few knew who Tillis or Cunningham were.
But, Cunningham said, when his pollsters explained Tillis was the Republican and Cunningham was the Democrat, Tillis suddenly got 90% of the vote.
When they added that Tillis supported Trump and Cunningham would work with Trump when he agrees and hold Trump accountable when he doesn’t, the poll went 95% in Tillis’ favor.
Shaw said Tillis’ campaign never polled and never saw a poll regarding Tillis and his connection to Trump, and if they had it wouldn’t have swayed Tillis one way or another on votes.
“He doesn’t make decisions like that,” Shaw said. “The reality is, is that he supports his agenda. He’s focused on helping him be successful. And you know the time will come for politics, but his focus in these first few weeks have been, let’s be as productive and successful as we can be.”
Loyalty to Trump
Cunningham needed Trump-Cooper voters on his side.
Cunningham remembers telling voters that “When Donald Trump talks about draining the swamp in Washington, one of the first alligators that will come out in the wash is Thom Tillis.”
Sometimes, Tillis made it easy on Cunningham’s campaign, like when he published an op-ed in the Washington Post vowing to vote with Democrats for congressional disapproval that Trump planned to declare a national emergency at the southern border in order to get money to build a border wall that Congress had denied him.
Realizing that was alienating himself from his base, Tillis, just three weeks later, voted against the Democrats’ bill and sided with Trump.
Other times, he remained in lockstep with Trump, including by approving the president’s nominees.
Just before winning reelection, Tillis voted to approve the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, predicting she would “go down in history as one of the great justices.”
The choice to fill the vacancy created by Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death proved especially controversial because of how close it was to the end of Trump’s term. By contrast, Senate Republicans had refused to fill a vacancy on the bench at the end of Obama’s term.
Falling in line again
Tillis is making similar moves now ahead of his 2026 campaign.
The attention on Tillis began with a social media post from The Wall Street Journal’s Lindsay Wise signaling that Tillis might be the senator who would make or break whether Hegseth, a former Fox News host, would be confirmed as secretary of defense after weeks of accusations of unprofessional conduct and abusing women and alcohol.
But when push came to shove, Tillis sided with Trump and confirmed Hegseth.
“North Carolina has seen this movie before,” Cunningham said. “And in Trump’s Washington, expect to find Tillis hiding in the middle of the flock of sheep. He knows if he strays out of the middle of the flock, he’s going to get eaten by the wolf.”
On Thursday, The New York Times reported on a conversation during the Hegseth confirmation fight in which Trump had threatened to find a primary election challenger for Tillis. The Times reported it happened during an Air Force One trip from Washington to Asheville that included all but two members of North Carolina’s Republican delegation. Trump had just learned, from the Wall Street Journal, that Tillis wasn’t a “yes” on Hegseth.
Various versions of the story were already making their way around the North Carolina political rumor mill when McClatchy interviewed Jackson, and several other articles had reported the lengths Tillis went to change the outcome of the Hegseth vote behind the scenes.
Jackson told McClatchy the incident on the plane shows Trump’s “mercurial nature.”
And, he said, what happened with Hegseth “is a great window into Tillis’ soul.”
“The fact is that he really wanted to try to sink Hegseth,” Jackson said. “We all saw the report about him pushing Hegseth’s (sister-in-law) to come out and tell people what she knew, and after all those things he voted for Hegseth and none of that has proven to his benefit. I think that sort of waffling is what we’ve seen of Tillis over the years with Trump.”
Tillis put out a statement saying he had been clear about his position that if Trump’s nominees were approved in committees, he would support their nomination, “absent any new material information about their qualifications.”
“Once Pete Hegseth’s nomination was sent to the floor by my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I conducted my own due diligence, including asking tough questions of Pete and I appreciated his candor and openness in answering them,” Tillis said in a written statement. “Pete has a unique perspective as a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is unquestionably passionate about modernizing our military and supporting the brave patriots like himself who serve our nation.”
Shaw said everyone needs “to get over the fact that Sen. Tillis voted for Pete Hegseth.”
“He did his due diligence, that led him to vote for Hegseth, and we’ve already seen him take quick action on securing the border, strengthening the military, doing all the kind of things that President Trump promised to do, and all the kind of things that Sen. Tillis is working with him on,” Shaw said.
After supporting Hegseth, Tillis began publicly speaking out in favor of other nominees.
“It’s not his job to nominate people,” Shaw said, when asked if Tillis believes every Trump choice should have been nominated. “It’s his job to do due diligence on the nominees. He has done that, and that has led him to support every one of these nominees.”
Tillis’ primary
Tillis is still nearly a year out from candidate filing for his reelection campaign.
“He’s got to beg and plead for Trump’s endorsement, which plays right into Trump’s hand,” Jackson said. “I think part of this, Trump doesn’t respect weak politicians. He wants loyalty. And when Tillis goes back and forth and back and forth of whether he’s going to support Trump’s nominees, he continues to undermine his relationship with Trump, which has never been good.”
Shaw says Tillis is focused, right now, on his work in the Senate, not an endorsement.
Two Republicans filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission indicating they’re running against Tillis: Andy Nilsson, a retired businessman from Winston-Salem who told The News & Observer he’d be a conservative who voters “can trust, that is not going to tell them what they want to hear and then vote different,” and Lichia Sihatu, a day care owner.
Far-right Republicans are threatening to find a bigger name to run against Tillis, meaning he needs to stay on Trump’s good side through at least the end of filing in December.
Former Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Lara Trump, former co-chair of the Republican National Committee, have been teased as potential contenders.
Robinson announced earlier this month that he was ending his political career, as he dropped a lawsuit against CNN for reporting he made racist and raunchy posts on a porn website.
Lara Trump just announced she is joining Fox News as a weekend anchor.
The general election
If Tillis does make it past a primary, he then has to face down a general election challenger, and Democrats say they have some big names ready to take him on.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is trying to convince Cooper to run.
Cooper plans to spend eight weeks, this spring, at Harvard University teaching about the intersection of politics and health care while debating his next steps.
If he runs against Tillis, early estimates expect this race to be record-breaking in terms of spending. Estimates range from $600 million to $1 billion. Tillis currently has $2.2 million in his war chest.
“Most people are waiting for Cooper to make a decision,” said Jackson, Cooper’s longtime strategist. “He’s the most popular elected official, politician in the state and has been for the last decade or more, and so a lot of folks have given him the time and space to make that decision.”
But Jackson said once Cooper makes that decision the race is on, either with Cooper or with the many Democrats waiting in the wings.
One Democrat who chose not to wait is former Rep. Wiley Nickel, who lost his congressional seat after Republicans redrew political maps. He’s already fundraising to potentially take on Tillis.
“Wiley is just the first one, and he’s playing it smart as a guy looking to get out there first with the hope that I can be in it the longest,” Jackson said.
Republicans currently hold 53 of the 100 Senate seats.
North Carolina was among the states identified by Republican Sen. Tim Scott, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, as a battleground that needed to be protected, according to Politico.
On Tuesday, Cook Political Report scored the North Carolina Senate race as one that leans Republican.
This story was originally published February 16, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
