The North Carolina Republican party spent its birth and adolescence as a progressive force. Initially based in the Appalachian mountains, where hardy yeomen voted on antipathy to the state’s secessionist elite, it gained a foothold in urban areas as the 20th century progressed. African-Americans voters who had managed to defy Jim Crow disenfrachisement formed a small but important Republican bloc. As the state saw the first glimmers of modernization, white collar professionals in the Piedmont began flocking to a party that suited their cultural sensibilities better than the populist Democrats. Governors Jim Holshouser and Jim Martin–hailing from Watauga and Mecklenburg counties, both redoubts of the old NCGOP–kept North Carolina on an environmentally friendly, pro-education course.
But the dynamics of Republican politics changed just as North Carolina’s two-party system began to emerge. In the tumult of desegregation, Jesse Helms engineered a revolution in this former Confederate state’s party of Lincoln. Originally a hard-edged insurgency, Helms’s conservatives recentered Republican politics on Eastern North Carolina. The mountain and urban offshoots of the party, at first resistant to Helms, would succumb to the force of his machine, and by the time Trump carried the state in 2016, his realignment was complete.
Senator Thom Tillis finds himself tasked with navigating the new landscape of Republican politics. A polished suburbanite, he must defend his seat in a party of populist small-town evangelicals. Mark Walker and George Holding, two possible primary opponents, each exude, in different ways, the Old South vibe found in the bastions of Republican primary voters. Walker is a flamboyant evangelical preacher, a type familiar to social conservatives from their weekly pilgrimages to the many simple protestant churches that dot the countryside. Congressman Holding was nurtured in the handsome neighborhoods of Old Raleigh. Culturally in tune with their voters, Holding and Walker also bring rock-ribbed conservative credentials to the race.
And there’s fertile ground for a primary challenge. Before Tillis’s previously announced opponent, Garland Tucker, withdrew from the race, most polling found the incumbent in a vulnerable position. PPP was representative: Their poll showed Tillis ahead of Tucker by only 40% to 31%. The conservative Civitas Institute found a similarly competitive race. Beyond the horse race numbers, polling has repeatedly found Tillis among the least popular senators in the country with his fellow Republicans. In one poll, he was the most unpopular Senator–period. Walker and Holding have a lot to work with.
Thirty years ago, Tillis would have been a mainstream North Carolina Republican. After decades of cultural sorting, he must feel like a stranger in a strange land. In his heyday as the boss and icon of the NCGOP, Jesse Helms encouraged Republicans to celebrate Robert E. Lee as well as Abraham Lincoln. Now, with few exceptions, Republicans in this state don’t celebrate Lincoln at all–and that’s why Tillis’ career may end before the general election gets started.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
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