It’s time to check in on our junior senator. Thom Tillis was elected to the Senate last November and brought some unique experience as leader of his state’s lower chamber. Now, he’s gone from there to being just one of 100 in the U.S. Senate. So, what’s he been up to?
So far, the biggest splash were his comments back in January, where he appeared to argue against basic government regulations like hand-washing for restaurant employees. That whole episode has pretty much blown over.
Besides that incident, Tillis has lived up to expectations in Washington. He’s not a Tea Party firebrand by any means but he’s no RINO squish who gets plaudits from the left, either. His voting record is pretty much identical to that of our senior senator, Richard Burr. He’s also continuing to work on issues he focused on back in North Carolina; two weeks ago he filed a bill to aid those harmed by eugenics programs.
His tenure has not been without controversy. This month he was attacked as a hypocrite for not attending a Senate Armed Services Committee, during which was discussed the threat posed by ISIS. (One might recall that Tillis made an issue of Hagan’s non-attendance in the campaign last fall.) The difference, it appears, is that Tillis was getting one-on-one counseling from Dick Cheney while Hagan was sipping cocktails at a fundraiser, an answer that didn’t appear to satisfy Tillis critics.
The freshman senator also angered folks on the left when he added amendments to a bill that would require fertility treatment for wounded veterans that were clearly aimed at Planned Parenthood, or in Tillis’s words, organizations “that take aborted babies’ organs and sell them.” Sen. Murray (D-WA) who sponsored the original bill, ended up withdrawing it, saying later that she was angry and truly upset about the attempts by “some Republicans” to pander to their base. Yesterday, Tillis joined many other Republicans in co-sponsoring a bill to defund Planned Parenthood.
As stated earlier, Tillis is no Ted Cruz. Tea Party folks weren’t happy when Tillis voiced disapproval of Sen. Cruz’s attack of Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor. Tillis said Cruz’s actions were a violation of rules and disrespectful to boot. Back in 2013, Richard Burr also called Cruz’s defunding Obamacare proposal “the dumbest idea ever” so North Carolina has two Republican senators who dislike the Texan (though they are far from alone in that regard.)
That’s Tillis’s first six months in a nutshell. Ideologically, I wouldn’t expect for him to change very much, if at all, over the next five years. What will be interesting is to see how far he’ll rise in the Senate hierarchy over the course of his term. He rose quickly in his time at IBM and as a legislator in the State House. A similar rise for Tillis in the U.S. Senate would not be unprecedented.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
Tillis–just another carpetbagger from afar.
The fact that Tillis somehow defeated Kay Hagan evidences the fact that we Democrats are not doing our job in North Carolina. We are either (1) not getting our voters out to vote, or (2) not resonating in general with the voting public, or (3) both. We must not allow this to happen with Burr’s reelection campaign in 2016. We need a good candidate, and we must all get behind him or her, while suppressing our differences. We were not able to achieve that level of maturity in 2014.
#1 for sure. I early voted and virtually all of the people in line at the polling place were in their 70s and 80s. Next day I dropped my wife off to vote and waited in the parking lot. The people exiting the building? All in their 70s and 80s!
Never trusted the guy and never felt he was all that smart. He just had the Koch Brothers behind him so he could do their bidding. Sad for North Carolina. another idiot lining his pockets and forgetting why he is supposed be in Washington. Screw the people I guess
Hmm… And where was Tillis LAST year when, as House Speaker, his own caucus was wondering why he was “sipping cocktails at a DC fundraiser” while votes languished in the General Assembly because he wasn’t there?
Frankly if the “biggest splash” he’s made since riding a wave of Koch/ALEC money to a Senate seat came from him making comments about employee hand-washing, he may challenge Burr for Emptiest Suit in the Senate by the time the year is out.
Both of them are a waste of oxygen.
I’m with you, j………
And for this he actually gets PAID!?*
In an election where 64% of the voters polled favored a minimum wage increase, and in an election that relied solely on electronic voting machines to tally the vote, it is extraordinarily suspect that a candidate with marginal state popularity, who is also a member of an unpopular, corporately influenced political party, somehow wins the election, especially considering all polls showed him running a distant second. That he would skip his Armed Services committee meeting to meet with someone, whom if dragged to The Hague would be convicted as a war criminal , is all the more telling of who these republicans are and what they intend for this country. Wynne forgot to mention that Tillis recently voted in favor of the unconscionable corporate power-grab called the TPP, TISA and the TTIP, which will abrogate the national sovereignty of the signees.
The I-77 toll road fiasco will come back to haunt Tillis.
Unreal. This article is the biggest and most slanted puff piece I’ve seen offered on these blogs in some time.
Tillis has done nothing but prove himself an incompetent follower, and a regressive shill. But somehow the blogger thinks that Tillis has done quite well for himself by having a voting record akin to that of empty-suiter Burr, by decrying handwashing regulations, and by dissing an important Armed Services committee meeting in favor of meeting with someone who led us into a war that took 4000 American lives on a trumped-up fallacy regarding WMDs.
Just terrific……
The commenter, Mr. Wynne, is a Republican.
Correction, the blogger, Mr. Wynne, is a Republican.