Republican Tillis leads Cunningham in NC race that could be ‘majority maker’ for Senate
Late Tuesday night, Sen. Thom Tillis stepped to the stage in front of cheering supporters in Mooresville, ready to declare victory in his reelection bid.
“Sweet,” he said.
Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, leads Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham by about 96,000 votes in their U.S. Senate race, according to unofficial results from the state board. Cunningham has not conceded, and The Associated Press has not called the race.
But Tillis, who thought he was getting a concession call from Cunningham before stepping to the stage, didn’t wait.
“What we accomplished tonight was a stunning victory. And we did it against all the odds, right?” Tillis told the small crowd. “I mean, we heard this before, you’re down in the polls. There’s no chance of winning.”
Tillis, a former North Carolina House speaker, also trailed in the polls in 2014 when he defeated incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan to earn his Senate seat.
There are 116,200 outstanding absentee ballots remaining, and they can be received up to Nov. 12 as long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day. Those results will not be announced until Nov. 12 or 13 after county boards have met to count absentee ballots, said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state board.
“The State Board of Elections is continuing to count ballots, and we plan to allow that process to be carried out, so every voter can have their voice heard,” Cunningham campaign manager Devan Barber said in a statement Wednesday.
Among the votes counted, Cunningham led Tillis more than 2-to-1 in absentee by-mail ballots, but Tillis topped Cunningham by 188,000 in in-person early votes and nearly 2-to-1 in Election Day votes.
Tillis, 60, trailed in public polling throughout the campaign, including right up to Election Day. It was the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history with more than $287 million spent by the candidates and outside groups in a key race for Republican hopes of maintaining their majority in the chamber.
That weighed on Tillis, he said.
“I was carrying a heavy burden,” Tillis said, “... thinking that North Carolina could be the majority maker for the U.S. Senate.”
Tillis’ apparent victory combined with wins by other vulnerable Republican incumbents in Iowa and Maine has put the GOP in good position to retain the majority.
The race turned negative in the final weeks, especially after Cunningham admitted to sending sexual text messages to a California woman who is not his wife. The woman later said she and Cunningham, a married father of two, had been intimate as recently as July.
Tillis and his Republican allies relentlessly attacked Cunningham over the scandal and his refusal to take media questions about it.
Paul Shumaker, Tillis’ campaign strategist and a veteran of North Carolina elections, compared the race to former Sen. Jesse Helms’ reelection bids.
“You’ve got 47% locked in against you regardless. You make sure you get 49% locked in against your opponent and you make sure you come out alright,” Shumaker said he told Tillis a few weeks ago. “You’re not going to be able to change your image. You have to make your opponent’s image worse than yours.”
Tillis currently has just under 49% of the vote, and Cunningham has just under 47%.
The allegations of marital infidelity created an opening for the Tillis campaign to drive up Cunningham’s negative ratings. Shumaker said in the first days after the text messages became public, the Tillis campaign saw an increase of 10 percentage points in Cunningham’s unfavorable rating.
In later polling, they found that voters who knew nothing about the scandal favored Cunningham, those who knew a little were split between the candidates and those who knew a lot were backing Tillis.
He said Cunningham’s lack of public appearances also hurt the Democrat, making it look like he was hiding something and making him seem like a politician.
“His behavior made him one of those guys.” Shumaker said.
Even some voters who cast their ballot for Cunningham did so with some reservations. Jack Rorick, a 60-year-old unaffiliated voter from Charlotte, voted straight Democrat because of President Donald Trump, including for Cunningham.
“Once he’s elected we could look for his replacement, too,” Rorick said.
The Cunningham campaign believed it had successfully navigated the final challenging month by keeping its focus on health care and the coronavirus pandemic.
Public polling indicated Cunningham was still leading.
“The race has never been about Cal as much as Tillis has tried to make it about Cal in the last month. It’s always been about Tillis and, specifically, his failure to look after North Carolina families, especially on health care,” Cunningham strategist Morgan Jackson said Tuesday before the election.
Cunningham apologized several times for the hurt he had caused his family and took full responsibility. But he has not done a scheduled media appearance since Oct. 9 and, despite campaigning across the state, did not alert the media to those stops — a rarity for candidates who typically crave attention.
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This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 3:35 PM.
