Donald Trump’s controversial Cabinet selections are already making life difficult for Republican senators.
No one should know that better than Thom Tillis.
More than any other Senate Republican, the North Carolina lawmaker is stuck between the demands of a restive MAGA base and an expected reelection campaign in 2026 in which Democrats consider him a top electoral target.
Vote against a cadre of Trump’s most controversial picks — including Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Health and Human Services Department and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence — and Tillis risks a serious primary challenge; support all of them, and he could be vulnerable to a political backlash that gives Democrats a chance to win his seat.
“He’s one of the most endangered incumbents, because you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” said Preston Elliott, a Democratic strategist who ran the campaign of Tillis’ opponent in 2014 when the Republican first ran for Senate. “And frankly, he is someone who always wants to be flexible and pivot, but to prove his brand, he’s going to have to stand for something.”
For Tillis, how he decides to handle Trump’s Cabinet selections will only be the start of a politically treacherous two-year election cycle.
Already, Trump-friendly Republicans in the state are predicting that he could face a primary challenge from recent GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, who remains popular among some conservative activists despite his dismal finish in this year’s governor’s race.
Even if Tillis fends off a primary challenger, his reward may be moving on to the general election only to run against the state’s most popular Democratic official, Gov. Roy Cooper, who many party operatives expect to at least seriously consider running for the seat after his second term as governor expires in January.
“Tillis is going to be in real trouble if he steps out of line with the mandate of the American people,” said Matt Hurley, who served as a senior adviser to Robinson’s campaign. “There’s clearly thousands of Republicans who don’t like him and don’t think that he aligns with the party’s values.”
Tillis has yet to indicate how he’ll vote on any of Trump’s Cabinet nominations. When asked by reporters last week about Gaetz, he didn’t jump out in support but did indicate that he’d give him a thorough review.
“I barely know Gaetz,” Tillis said. “All I know is that he likes picking fights on social media. He’ll have to deal with that in committee. But I don’t know his background. I’m going to look at it and give him a fair hearing.”
His office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Tillis has not officially announced he will seek reelection but is widely expected to run for another term. A longtime adviser of his told WRAL that the senator’s immediate focus would be ushering in the new Republican majority to the Senate, but that with the 2026 midterms on the horizon, “Tillis will have a historic amount of resources, infrastructure and a record of results to run on.”
Tillis is no stranger to difficult elections, having twice won in North Carolina in highly competitive races. Another stiff test in 2026, his advisers say, would be nothing new. In 2020, the Republican defeated Democratic Senate nominee Cal Cunningham in one of the most expensive Senate races in US history.
And although North Carolina Democrats picked up key electoral wins statewide this year, Donald Trump ultimately won the state and increased his margin of victory from 2020.
Republicans, looking at voting trends, think there are good signs for Tillis.
“Unaffiliated voters in the state really broke for Republicans this time,” North Carolina-based GOP strategist Doug Heye said. “Yes, there could be some backlash to Trump two years in, but Tillis has shown he’s able to build the coalitions he needs.”
Heye and other Republicans pointed to voter-registration trends in the state that show Republicans growing their numbers compared to Democrats.
“The Democratic Party has gotten smaller in the state and is less of the overall vote now,” said Paul Shumaker, a longtime Tillis adviser. “And now they have an internal fight between their liberal and radical wings.”
Nonetheless, Tillis was always going to face a fraught path to stave off a serious primary challenge in 2026 — and that was before Donald Trump started naming his Cabinet.
In a formal vote at the North Carolina GOP’s annual convention in June 2023, Tillis received an official censure for joining Democrats on policies around same-sex marriage, immigration and gun violence. He was a part of the group of senators who pushed the bill to codify same-sex and interracial marriage in 2022, supported the gun control law signed by Joe Biden that same year and pushed for a bipartisan immigration-reform proposal in 2023.
“Tillis is not really a Trump guy,” Hurley said. “And he is disliked by the base, which is already calling on someone else, like [Dan] Bishop or Robinson to run instead.”
Hurley said Robinson has not yet indicated to him whether or not he would consider running against Tillis, whom he has had a tense relationship with. (Robinson referred to Tillis as a “spineless toad” in the closing weeks of his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign after the senator withheld support to him.) Robinson’s focus right now, Hurley says, is “finishing out the last two months strong as lieutenant governor,” but that Tillis’ current decisions will affect the playing field.
Allen Mashburn, an unsuccessful GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, is among the state’s Republicans who think Tillis should face a primary challenge, telling NOTUS he’s “not a fan” of the senator.
“He certainly has his faction of die-hard supporters, but I’m not a fan,” Mashburn said. “He doesn’t show up at Republican events. I’ve crisscrossed this state numerous times in the last 16 to 18 months campaigning and I have yet to meet or see Thom Tillis.”
“Tillis is very vulnerable, and you can watch him right now and predict him very well,” Mashburn added. “If it’s going to be advantageous to align with Trump, you’ll see him position himself that way.”
Tillis has already shown signs of trying to win over Trump-friendly Republican voters since the election, blasting Democrats last week during a vote to confirm a Joe Biden-nominated judge to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The senator vowed to aggressively go against Democrats in the future.
“I’m kind of wondering what Thom Tillis needs to show up in the next administration,” Tillis told Senate Judiciary Democrats last Thursday. “The Thom Tillis who was here last time and wanted to work with you guys on some of these judicial nominations or the Thom Tillis who reflexively says, ‘No.’”
That kind of outreach to the Republican base could help Tillis defeat a primary challenge, says some GOP strategists loyal to Trump who write off the prospect of the senator having a difficult time making it to the general election.
“There’s some Republicans that have talked about the need to challenge Senator Tillis potentially in a primary, but I would consider that the fringe of our party at this point,” Republican strategist Wayne King said. “North Carolinians spoke loud and clear the way they feel about Mark Robinson and his antics on November 5th.”
In 2017, Tillis voted to confirm all of Trump’s nominees for Cabinet positions. The politics of Trump’s selections this time around, however, are much thornier: Gaetz has faced a sex-trafficking investigation, Kennedy has aggressively questioned the science supporting vaccines and Gabbard has been criticized over her past praise of Russia.
Democrats say they don’t expect Cooper will even begin considering a run until his term expires early next year. But political operatives, from both parties, are already openly talking about it.
“Roy Cooper has spent the last eight years rebuilding both the infrastructure and the brand of the Democratic Party in North Carolina,” said Bruce Thompson, a veteran Democratic fundraiser in the state who is friendly with the governor. “And I think he views that as his public-service legacy, and it would make sense he would solidify that legacy by running for the Senate in 2026.”
Thompson emphasized that he did not have any insider knowledge of whether Cooper would run. But he’s not the only Democrat urging the governor to do it.
“There have been discussions among some of us already that right now, you know, Cooper is the guy that some of us are pushing for,” said John Verdejo, a Democratic National Committee delegate from North Carolina. “So if he decides to do it, he’s already got the support of many.”
Cooper, of course, would face challenges of his own: Federal races can be more demanding than state elections, even those for governor, and draw more outside spending and media scrutiny. The governor’s ability to win over moderate Republican votes at the state level, too, might be diminished in a Senate race, where partisanship matters more to some voters.
“Roy Cooper has never had a tough competitive race,” Shumaker, the Tillis adviser, said. “He’s been a candidate of good timing.”
—
Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Alex Roarty is a reporter at NOTUS.