North Carolina Republican delegates voted more than two-to-one at their party convention this weekend to censure Senator Thom Tillis, accusing him of straying from conservative values around gay rights, gun violence, and border security.
In the Saturday morning vote at their convention in Greensboro, 799 North Carolina Republicans voted in favor of censuring Tillis, while 361 voted against the effort, a party spokesman confirmed to the local News & Observer newspaper.
Supporters of the censure said it was appropriate, claiming that Tillis is increasingly out of step with Republican values, according to news reports. Tillis, who has served in the Senate since 2015, has gained a reputation for working with lawmakers across the aisle. He was narrowly re-elected in 2020.
Last year, Tillis, who had previously opposed same-sex marriage, supported the Respect for Marriage Act, which enshrined recognition for same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law. He urged his GOP colleagues to back the measure as well, even though both the national and state GOP platforms oppose same-sex marriage.
Tillis has also supported funding for red-flag laws, which allow courts to remove guns from people deemed to be a potential threat, and he initially opposed former president Donald Trump’s plan to use military construction funds to build a border wall.
In late 2022, Tillis worked with Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat turned independent, on an immigration proposal that would have created a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants who came to the country as children. That measure was paired with beefed-up funding for border security, swifter removal of illegal immigrants who don’t qualify for asylum, and a year-long extension of Title 42, the pandemic-era immigration measure.
One delegate, Felice Pete, told the News & Observer that Tillis was censured because “people felt like Senator Tillis no longer took account of our platform.”
“He is a good man. He is a fine man. I worked hard for him in the hot sun, with my son in a stroller, knocking doors. So the very least that he could do for the people back in North Carolina is stick to the platform,” Pete told the paper.
Another delegate, Jim Forster, said that Tillis’s recent positions don’t “reflect the party’s shift to the right.” He told the Associated Press that North Carolina needs “people who are unwavering in their support for conservative ideals.”
Daniel Keylin, a Tillis spokesman, said the senator 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,” Keylin told the AP in an email.