Amid a bruising fight with his party over the direction of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" on tax cuts, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced this week he won't seek re-election, opening up what was already one of the GOP's most vulnerable seats on the map for 2026.
But now that he has been liberated from his obligations to toe the party line, he should do more than just fight to save low-income people from devastating Medicaid cuts, Myron B. Pitts wrote for The Fayetteville Observer, a local newspaper in Tillis' home state.
Rather, he argued, Tillis should find the backbone to take on Trump on all of his worst excesses.
"I can’t say I blame" Tillis for retiring, noted Pitts. "Not only would Tillis have faced a tough primary but a difficult general election, too, especially if the opponent is former Gov. Roy Cooper, as some are predicting. Even if Tillis were to ultimately vote against the tax bill, his assessment earlier this month that the unpopular legislation could lead to major electoral losses for Republicans still stands, and he might have been one of those losses."
Even so, he added, the question remains: "Will Tillis, now that he is free from reelection concerns, use the remaining part of his term to oppose the worst excesses of the Trump agenda? Or will he continue to rubber-stamp that agenda, as in the past? Will Thom Tillis go out with a bang or a sustained whimper?"
Because in recent years, he has been absent from that fight, Pitts wrote. For instance, he voted to acquit Trump in his Senate trial for January 6. "Seven Republican senators crossed the aisle to make that vote. Tillis voted 'not guilty.' He knew better. We all knew he knew better." Tillis also often backed down on the occasions he did stand up to Trump, like when he criticized Trump for declaring a state of emergency to build the border wall, only to flip and support it later.
All this stands in contrast to the bolder Tillis Pitts remembered covering when he served as North Carolina's state house speaker — and took on his state's dark history of eugenics.
"North Carolina sterilized thousands of people against their will from the 1920s to the 1970s based on a quack science that designated some people as inferior. In our state and elsewhere, the practices fell disproportionately on people who were poor, Black or an unmarried woman," he wrote.
"Tillis worked across the aisle with Democrat Larry Womble, and the state General Assembly passed in December 2015 bipartisan legislation to assist victims. Frankly, this is not the kind of compassionate effort I tend to associate with Republicans."
"Maybe Thom Tillis, the erstwhile contender, can look out for the rest of us for his last 18 months in the Senate," Pitts concluded. "If he sustains his vote against the Big Ugly Bill, that would be a good first step."
