The reverberations of the Tillis decision
March 3 now becomes a critical Senate primary day, with elections scheduled in North Carolina and Texas, two states on Democrats’ wish list.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina apparently decided to have his own Independence Day on Sunday, five days before the nationwide celebration.
Tillis’s surprise announcement that he will not seek reelection next year frees him from having to worry about facing a MAGA-approved, likely Trump-endorsed challenger in his state’s March 3 primary. Even if Tillis hypothetically navigated that primary, an equally worrisome November general election would have been ahead of him, particularly if former Gov. Roy Cooper were to enter the race.
The last five presidential elections illustrate how competitive North Carolina has become. The weakest showing by a Democratic nominee in the Tar Heel State was Hillary Clinton’s 45.2 percent in 2016, followed by Kamala Harris’s 47.7 percent last year. President Obama’s 48.4 percent in his 2012 reelection comes next, followed by Joe Biden’s 48.6 percent in 2020. The best result was Obama’s victory in 2008, when he won 49.7 percent of the vote.
The Republican primary now looms large. Will the winner be a mainstream candidate with swing-voter appeal like Tillis, or will GOP voters in the state nominate someone from the red-zone part of the field? Anyone doubting how far “out there” a Republican statewide primary can be needs look no further than then-Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who received 65 percent of the primary vote last year to be the state’s nominee for governor. Beset by scandals, Robinson won just 41 percent in the general election.
The North Carolina primary is the same day as Texas’s primary between GOP Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. This, too, is a critical race because, against Cornyn, Democrats have no shot at winning the seat, but against the far more polarizing and scandal-laden Paxton, running in what could be a difficult political environment for the GOP, a Democrat like former Rep. Colin Allred might have a shot.
True, Texas has proven itself to be resiliently red, dashing Democratic hopes cycle after cycle. But after North Carolina and Maine, where do Democrats have a better shot at a Senate flip? Some say Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa could be vulnerable, as could appointed Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio. I’m skeptical in both cases, especially when compared to the prospect of Paxton winning the nomination.
With 24 reliably Republican states, 19 equally dependably Democratic states, and seven swing states, the country is very neatly, though not happily, divided. The defeat of Democratic Senate incumbents Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana last year, combined with the loss of the open seat in West Virginia, leaves exactly zero Democrats representing red states and exactly one Republican (Sen. Susan Collins of Maine) representing a blue state.
This effectively narrows the action to the seven swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin under all but the most extraordinary circumstances. Even before Tillis’s announcement, North Carolina was likely to be one of the three most-watched Senate races in the country, the others being the open seat in Michigan, where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is not seeking reelection, and Georgia, where freshman Sen. Jon Ossoff is seeking reelection.
Cooper is one of two current or former governors potentially running for the Senate in 2026, Maine Gov. Janet Mills being the other. Mills said she will decide by the end of the year.
Interestingly, current or former governors frequently used to run for the Senate, but not the other way around. According to a 2021 piece by the University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier: “Since 1900, just 21 sitting or former U.S. Senators have been elected governor while 153 sitting or former governors were elected or appointed to the U.S. Senate.”
Since Ostermeier wrote this, two more have moved from the Senate to a governor’s mansion—Mike Braun of Indiana and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. Jim Justice of West Virginia made the more traditional move in the other direction.
As the Los Angeles Times’ Mark Barabak notes, two senators are currently running for governor of their home states—Michael Bennet of Colorado and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is eyeing a bid for governor of Tennessee, reported NBC News a month ago. If former vice president and senator Kamala Harris runs for governor of California, she could also join that smaller cohort.
Democrats will also be playing defense in two more open seats in Minnesota and New Hampshire. Both are generally blue states, but like Texas in the other direction, they are on the next concentric circle out from purple. My guess is that one but probably not both of them will become a headache for Democrats.
If Republicans simply seek to hang onto their majority, they should be very worried about the Tillis decision. On the other hand, anybody who cares about him as a person should be happy for him. His life just got a lot easier.