Thom Tillis
Thomas Roland Tillis is an American businessman and politician of the Republican Party serving since 2015 as a United States senator from North Carolina. He served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2007 to 2015 and as the State House speaker from 2011 to 2015. Tillis was elected to the United States Senate in 2014, defeating Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan, and reelected in 2020. He became the state's senior U.S. senator when Richard Burr retired in 2023.
A moderate Republican, Tillis has voted for proposals such as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which provided states funding for red flag laws, and the Respect for Marriage Act, which repeals the Defense of Marriage Act. He supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and initially opposed President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration to divert funding to a border wall.
Tillis serves on the Senate Security and Cooperation in Europe; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Finance; Judiciary; and Veterans' Affairs Committees. He chairs the Subcommittee on Personnel ; the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property ; and the Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight.
On June 29, 2025, Tillis announced that he would not seek reelection to a third term in 2026.
Early life and education
Tillis was born in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Margie and Thomas Raymond Tillis, a boat draftsman. He was the oldest boy among six children, with three older sisters. By the time he was 17, his family had moved 20 times, living in New Orleans and Nashville, among other places; Tillis never attended the same school in consecutive years. Tillis, his father, and his two brothers are all named Thomas Tillis. One of his brothers, Thomas "Rick" Tillis, served in the Tennessee House of Representatives.Following his 1978 graduation from high school, Tillis left home to get a job. He then attended Chattanooga State Community College before receiving a Bachelor of Science in technology management from the University of Maryland University College in 1986.
Business career
After graduating from Antioch High School in 1978, Tillis worked at Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co. in Chattanooga, Tennessee, helping computerize records in conjunction with Wang Laboratories, a computer company in Boston. Wang eventually hired Tillis to work in its Boston office. He spent two and a half years there before being transferred back to Chattanooga, and then Atlanta. In 1990, he was recruited to work for accounting and consulting firm Price Waterhouse. In 1996, Tillis was promoted to partner. In 1998, he and his family moved to Cornelius, North Carolina.PricewaterhouseCoopers sold its consulting arm to IBM in 2002 and Tillis went to IBM as well. Tillis began his political career in 2002 in Cornelius, as he pushed for a local bike trail and was elected to the town's park board. He ran for town commissioner in 2003 and tied for second place.
North Carolina House of Representatives
After a two-year term as town commissioner, Tillis ran for the General Assembly in 2006. He defeated incumbent John W. Rhodes in the Republican primary and went on to win the election unopposed. Tillis was reelected unopposed in 2008, 2010 and 2012. He formally left IBM in 2009. He was campaign chairman for the House Republican Caucus in 2010. After Republicans won a majority in the North Carolina House for the first time since 1998, Tillis was chosen as Speaker, the fifth Republican to hold the role, and was unanimously reelected in 2013. Governing magazine named Tillis and North Carolina Senate President pro tempore Phil Berger "GOP Legislators to Watch" in 2011.The state house overseen by Tillis restructured the state's tax code, redrew North Carolina's congressional districts, and passed legislation to sunset existing state rules and regulations and limit new regulations to ten years.
After Republican Pat McCrory was elected governor in 2012, Tillis presided over legislation reducing early voting days, invalidating ballots cast outside one's precinct, and requiring specific kinds of photo ID in order to vote. A top Tillis aide had previously requested data on photo ID ownership by race, which showed that black people would be significantly more likely than white people to become unable to vote if such legislation passed. Tillis said he requested the data to ensure the bill would not violate federal laws against discrimination. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the restrictions, writing in its opinion that they "target African Americans with almost surgical precision".
In 2014, 14 people protesting cuts to the earned income tax credits program and Tillis's refusal to expand Medicaid were arrested after staging a sit-in in his office.
U.S. Senate
Elections
2014
In 2014, Tillis announced that he would not seek reelection to the state House, instead running for U.S. Senate against first-term Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan. In the Republican primary, he was endorsed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, then-North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The New York Times called Tillis a "favorite of the party establishment."During his primary campaign, Tillis skipped four candidate forums and one of three televised primary debates in an effort to avoid lesser-known rivals, and to cement his image as the "inevitable nominee". Tillis was criticized during the Republican primary for raising money from groups lobbying the state House. On May 6, he won the nomination with 45.68% of the vote over Greg Brannon and Mark Harris, described as a victory for the Republican establishment over the insurgent Tea Party movement.
Tillis was announced the winner of the Senate race on November 4. He received 48.8% of the vote, the lowest winning total in North Carolina history for a U.S. Senate candidate; Hagan garnered 47.3%.
During the 2014 campaign, the Tillis campaign and the North Carolina Republican Party paid $345,000 to the data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica to microtarget voters. The company later touted their work on Tillis's campaign, including "psychographic profiles for all voters in North Carolina" that enabled "tailored messages" for particular audiences. Tillis's connections to the firm were scrutinized after revelations that its data had been illicitly harvested from Facebook.
In the 2014 election, Tillis received $22,888,975 in "dark money", which constituted 81% of non-party outside spending in support. OpenSecrets placed the final cost of outside spending at $8.5 million for Hagan and $35.5 million attacking Tillis, and $13.7 million for Tillis and $20.9 million attacking Hagan, placing the totals by candidate at $44 million for Hagan, and $34.6 million for Tillis.
2020
Tillis ran for and won reelection in 2020. He was challenged in the Republican primaries by conservative businessman Garland Tucker, who spent $1.3 million to finance his campaign before dropping out in December 2019, after Trump endorsed all incumbent Republican senators up for election in 2020, including Tillis. Tillis won the March 3 Republican primary and faced Democratic nominee Cal Cunningham in the November general election. Cunningham led Tillis in the polls for most of the year. In October 2020, Cunningham acknowledged having an extramarital affair and his lead in the polls was reduced to less than two points before election day. Tillis received 48.7% of the vote to Cunningham's 46.9%.Tenure
After the release of the Access Hollywood tape during the 2016 United States presidential election, Tillis called Trump's comments "indefensible". According to Politico, he "began the Trump era by negotiating with Democrats on immigration and co-authoring legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller" but has increasingly aligned himself with the president due to pressure from his party. While occasionally criticizing Trump's tone, Tillis said in 2017 that he had "not deviated once from any nomination or any vote that the president happens to be supportive of" and has voted with Trump's stated positions 90% of the time as of January 2021.In 2016, Tillis opposed filling the then Supreme Court vacancy until after the election, adding the nomination "would be best left to the next president." With around seven months until the 2016 presidential election, Tillis argued that the United States was "in the middle of a presidential election, and the Senate majority is giving the American people a voice to determine the direction of the Supreme Court". In September 2020, with less than two months to the next presidential election, Tillis supported an immediate vote on President Trump's nominee. The day after Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, he said Trump would pick a "well-qualified and conservative jurist" while Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would pick a "liberal activist".
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Tillis apologized after he was spotted not wearing a face mask in a crowd during Trump's acceptance speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, saying, "I fell short of my own standard." He was criticized after he suggested that Hispanic people were harder hit because they were less likely to wear masks and practice social distancing. Tillis tested positive for COVID-19 on October 2, 2020, after a White House event. He broadly supported Governor Roy Cooper's handling of COVID-19, an unusual stance for a prominent North Carolina Republican. He also took a stance against claims that North Carolina's COVID-19 case increases were due to migrants entering the state, saying, "the biggest factor right now is we have far too many people who are refusing to get the vaccine."
Analysts have generally regarded Tillis as a moderate Republican. In 2023, the North Carolina Republican Party voted to censure him, particularly over his stances on immigration and gay marriage.
In June 2025, Tillis was one of three Republican senators to oppose the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. After Trump criticized him, Tillis announced he would not seek reelection, saying, "In Washington over the last few years, it's become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species."