GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) – North Carolina Republicans sent a message to their senior U.S. senator on Saturday: Do what we say and don’t make deals.
Members of the party who attended the state convention in Greensboro voted to censure Tillis for, as some said, not following the party’s platform and making deals with Democrats and independents. Tillis did not attend the 4-day gathering at the Koury Convention Center – Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) did – and presumably learned of the vote to censure after the fact.
Attendees apparently have a problem that Tillis worked with Democrats to craft legislation on touchy topics such as gun control, same-sex and interracial marriage and election reform. And he worked down to the last days of December in a bipartisan effort to facilitate immigration reform.
In an ever-widening partisan divide in Congress, Tillis had emerged as a person who could build consensus on difficult issues, earning a deep-dive profile in The Washington Post, although he eschewed the idea that he is a “dealmaker” and certainly not “bipartisan.”
“I don’t believe in this kumbaya, everybody-be-happy, lets-all-be-bipartisan [thing],” Tillis told The Post. “I think you’re bipartisan on a transactional basis. If you’re always bipartisan, then you’ve lost your mooring on your ideological worldview.”
Still, those lawmaking efforts inspired 799 out of 1,160 attendees – about 69% – to condemn his efforts as having committed, as the resolution said, “blatant violations of our party platform” – i.e., not voting how they thought he was going to vote.
Such a move by the state party isn’t new. In 2021, the NC GOP’s central committee voted to censure now-retired Sen. Richard Burr for his vote to convict former President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial related to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I was surprised by the censure vote, but considering that the NC Republican Party censured the former senior US senator, Richard Burr, for his guilty vote in the second impeachment trial of former President Trump, I’m not that shocked by the public rebuke to Senator Tillis,” said Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College who also coauthors a blog about state politics. “In the grand scheme of things, however, it is just that: a public rebuke.”
Although Tillis did not post a comment about the censure, a spokesperson for him, Daniel Keylin, told The News & Observer on Saturday: “Senator Tillis keeps his promises and delivers results. He will never apologize for his work passing the largest tax cut in history, introducing legislation to secure the border and end sanctuary cities, delivering desperately-needed funding to strengthen school safety, and protecting the rights of churches to worship freely based on their belief in traditional marriage.”
Why the censure
Although it’s unclear exactly how the censure came to a vote – one attendee said it was part of a broader motion – there might have been a harbinger from the Republican Party of Davie County, whose website is dominated by a censure resolution dated Jan. 17 that was signed by county Chair Linda Mace and four other officers. The resolution condemned Tillis for “acting contrary to both the Judeo-Christian Constitutional values held dear to our Union and the North Carolina Republican Party Platform.”
The county party cited Tillis’s role in creating the bipartisan “Respect for Marriage Act,” which, the resolution said, “codifies same-sex ‘marriages’ into federal law and threatens religious liberty.”
The Davie County GOP also implored District 5 of North Carolina, of which Davie is a part, to join this resolution at the next convention. The party went one better than that.
Mace didn’t respond to an email seeking further comment. Davie County also is the home of the state’s other senator, Ted Budd, who was elected in 2022 to succeed Burr.
Chris Meadows, chair of the Guilford County GOP, pointed out that Saturday’s censure was “part of another resolution, not a stand-alone resolution. I’ve made a practice of not telling people how I vote, and that includes the delegates from Guilford County,” he wrote in response to an emailed query from WGHP. “I am only one vote of 115 Guilford delegates that were registered and almost 1,700 delegates from across NC that were present.”
Diane Parnell, chair of the Rockingham County GOP, didn’t have a problem stating her position.
“I voted FOR censure,” she wrote in an email. “I believe that Senator Tillis should listen to his constituents on matters such as the Marriage Act, gun control and other issues.
“We, the people, elected Thom Tillis to represent us and vote accordingly to the Republican Platform and the stance we take on certain issues.
“Although the censure does not remove him from office and carries no weight, it surely sends a message that Republicans are upset with many of his choices on votes. He will remember that ‘elections have consequences!’”
WGHP asked the same questions of county chairs from 11 other counties in the Triad – Wilkes County provides no access channel to its party leadership – but most didn’t respond.
But Judy Carter, chair in Alamance County Republican Women, told The News & Observer that the censure is a reminder to Tills: “We want you to remember who voted for you.”
Tillis’ record
Tillis represented North Carolina House District 98 from 2007 to 2015 and was Speaker of the House in his last two terms (2011-2015). But in 2014 he defeated incumbent U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) by about 45,000 votes to steal a seat for the party. He won re-election in 2020 by nearly 96,000 votes over Democrat Cal Cunningham.
Tillis serves on the Senate committees on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Finance, Judiciary and Veterans Affairs and various subcommittees of those and is the ranking member of the consumer protections subcommittee.
In the 2016 nomination cycle, Tillis endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida). He backed Trump in 2020 and voted against his second impeachment in January 2021.
Tillis hardly has been considered anything but a stalwart conservative, having voted against the American Rescue Plan of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Governing vs. activism
Former Gov. Pat McCrory, a candidate for the GOP Senate nomination in 2022 (won by Budd) and the state’s last Republican governor (2012-2015), recently joined the No Labels movement because he said he thinks “the two parties are failing.” On Saturday he certainly thought the Republicans were failing Tillis.
“I join former Governor Jim Martin in opposing the censure against Senator Thom Tillis,” McCrory, a native of Jamestown, wrote on his Twitter account. “It’s time also for all NC state and federal elected republicans to stand with Thom and publicly voice their opposition to the action taken at our convention.”
Bitzer said party votes like the censure indicate the separation between those governing and those activists who attend conventions.
“I think what it speaks to are the differences, within a political party, of the party-in-government aspect (elected officials) versus the party-as-an-organization, namely the party activists who make up the convention attendees,” he said. “The activists tend to be the most committed, most engaged, and often the most ideological of the party members, and seeking compromise and negotiation within our divided political environment can be seen as a betrayal of pure party principles.”
