The power broker North Carolina senator caught in the middle of Trump’s confirmations fight

On Monday, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina sent a letter to the deputy director of the FBI asking about reports that Iran potentially targeted Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the bureau, in a cyberattack. Patel is the latest of Trump’s picks to have allegedly been attacked by hackers from the country. It’s something that a number of Republicans have been quick to shout about.

Tillis going to the mat for Patel is not surprising. Last week, he told The Independent that he was inclined to support Trump’s FBI pick despite Patel’s penchant for conspiracy theories.

“Based on the information I have and the information I've received from people that work closely with them, I'm inclined to support him,” Tillis said.

Trump’s nomination of former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be his nominee for attorney general, however, clearly made Tillis uncomfortable. That situation sorted itself out when Gaetz saw the writing on the wall and dropped out. But it speaks to a larger problem that Tillis has: He’s probably the most endangered Republican incumbent senator this cycle. That’s not just because of the fact that Democrats are targeting him, but because he faces a potentially serious challenge from his right flank.

His relationship with Trump is complicated. In 2019, when Trump tried to declare a national emergency to secure money for his proposed wall at the US-Mexico border, Tillis wrote a Washington Post op-ed saying he would oppose the emergency, only to support it in the end. It was a stunning flip-flop.

He then voted fairly consistently with Trump on everything from tax cuts to judicial nominations. He voted to acquit Trump for both impeachments. But when President Joe Biden came to office, Tillis emerged as a consummate dealmaker, working with Democrats on everything from the first major piece of gun legislation to pass in almost 30 years to infrastructure to codifying protections for same-sex and interracial married couples.

He urged his Democratic colleagues to do the same during a Trump trifecta.

“If you vote with 50 other Democrats and 12 Republicans, you're not really bipartisan,” he said. “You're voting as a partisan block. It'll be fascinating when we talk about social security reform or other things that they've had interest in, if they are prepared to demonstrate what I did demonstrate.”

Tillis’s relationship to the ultra-conservative faction in his party has always been a rocky one. He can rightly claim credit for helping flip both houses of the state’s legislature in 2010 for the first time in more than a century as part of the Tea Party wave. He also took out out an incumbent Democratic senator in 2014. But plenty of conservatives have always seen him as a RINO.

Like Senate Minority Mitch McConnell, Tillis’s fight with the far right isn’t ideological, it’s strictly business: he sees them simply as unelectable. He proved instrumental to taking out Madison Cawthorn, the beleaguered one-term congressman who became an embarrassment to the state. He also vocally criticized Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, even before reports came out alleging that Robinson had called himself a “Black Nazi” and a “perv” on a porn website called Nude Africa. Tillis told me at the time that if Robinson had evidence he didn’t make those posts, he should come forward with it.

Of course, Robinson didn’t, even though he does deny the allegations. And though Trump won North Carolina last month, Robinson’s antics cost Republicans dearly. They failed to win the governorship — many people voted for Democrat Josh Stein and Trump at the same time — as well as the attorney general’s office and the superintendent. They also narrowly held onto a state supreme court seat and broke Republicans’ veto-proof majority in the legislature, one that had previously allowed them to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

Tillis knew exactly who to blame afterward.

“I think candidate quality matters, and I believe that Mr Robinson ended up having the impact I thought he would down-ballot,” he told The Independent.

For his part, Robinson has questioned whether Tillis should be the nominee for Senate this coming cycle. And Trump’s victory overall could spell trouble for Tillis. One poll recently showed that both Robinson and Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, would beat Tillis in a primary (Lara Trump has also angled for Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s Senate seat).

“If a two-term senator can't defend in a Republican primary, then he or she's not worth their salt,” Tillis told The Independent. “I'm planning on running... [S]omebody wants to run in the primary? Great. Love primaries. They get scrappy, tend to be personal, and I'm okay with that.”

If Tillis were to somehow survive a primary, he would have an even bigger challenge in November. It’s no secret that Cooper, the wildly popular governor who will be out of a job in January, is considering running for the job. An affable politician from Eastern North Carolina who has never lost a race, he’d be a formidable opponent to Tillis, especially in a midterm year where Trump fatigue might run high.

This means that Tillis will need to operate a minefield this cycle. If he crosses or opposes any Trump nominees, he will immediately be targeted by the far-right faction in his party and potentially lose a primary. But if he ties himself too closely to Trump, he risks Democrats putting a target on his back.