Senate GOP leaders were fundraising for Tillis’s reelection campaign days before Tillis announced in late June that he would not seek another term.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis’s recent decision not to seek reelection in 2026 came as a shock to many of his colleagues and supporters in the state.
But along with his no-vote on the president’s reconciliation bill over Medicaid-related concerns, Tillis’s June 29 announcement that he would not seek a third term also came as a “disappointment” to members of Senate Republican leadership who spent the days leading up to his retirement announcement fundraising for him, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told National Review in his first wide-ranging sit-down interview since passing the reconciliation bill.
“I tried to discourage him from making a rash decision about that,” Thune said of Tillis’s retirement decision. “He’s been obviously weighing this for a while. I met with him months back about his decision to run, and he wasn’t ready to say he was all in yet.”
As National Review first reported late last year, Tillis formally kicked off his reelection campaign on December 11, a campaign kickoff announcement that prompted him to confirm his decision to run for reelection in an anticlimactic hallway interview. But on June 29, one day after Trump said he’d recruit a primary challenger to Tillis over his opposition to the president’s signature domestic policy bill, North Carolina’s senior senator indicated he would not seek a third term.
That retirement announcement came as news to many of his colleagues at an inconvenient time. As Thune revealed in an interview with National Review on Thursday, Senate GOP leaders were fundraising for Tillis’s reelection campaign days before Tillis announced in late June that he would not seek another term.
“I did some fundraising for him in Chicago the week before last, with him and a couple of other candidates out there,” Thune told National Review on Thursday. “So, I mean, our expectation was that he was moving forward and going to run,” he said, adding that he respects Tillis’s decision and that “whether to run or not run is a very personal decision for people.”
A spokesman for Tillis did not respond to a request for comment on Thune’s remarks.
Tillis’s eleventh-hour decision to oppose the reconciliation bill also obviously came as a major blow to Senate GOP leadership, who had expected Tillis to support the legislation. The North Carolina senator’s Medicaid-focused opposition required lots of last-minute maneuvering on the part of the Senate GOP whip team, which ended up turning to centrist swing vote Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to get the bill across the finish line earlier this month.
“You play the hand you’re dealt, and sometimes you get an unexpected turn of events,” Thune told NR. “We thought he was fine, he indicated in multiple settings that he was for this and then so it came as a bit of a surprise, obviously, when he came to a different conclusion. But that’s his prerogative. Every senator has the right to make their own conclusions based on what they think is in the best interest of their state.”
Beyond his no-vote on the president’s sweeping domestic policy bill, there are other early indications that the retiring North Carolina senator will spend the rest of his term playing a more obstructionist, Trump-critical role than he has in years past. Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday, Tillis said he will not vote to confirm any Trump appointees who come through his committees of jurisdiction who have expressed support for January 6, called some of Trump’s advisers “amateurs,” and voiced frustration with some members of the president’s cabinet, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
While Tillis maintained to CNN that he does not regret voting to confirm Hegseth given the information he had at the time, he said he now has second thoughts about the defense secretary’s leadership capabilities. “With the passing of time, I think it’s clear he’s out of his depth as a manager of a large, complex organization,” he said. Tillis is particularly frustrated that Hegseth did not give the White House a heads up on his decision to pause weapons shipments to Ukraine amid Russia’s continued invasion, telling Tapper: “That’s just amateurish. That’s from somebody who doesn’t understand large organization dynamics.”
Looking ahead to 2026, Thune is optimistic about holding Tillis’s seat. North Carolina Republicans are hoping President Trump can unite voters around a consensus GOP candidate to avoid a costly and damaging primary election, and prospective candidates include the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, and Representative Pat Harrigan, among others.
“Fortunately, we have a good bench there, and so I expect we will be ready to compete,” Thune said. “And the Democrats, for sure, will target the state. It’ll probably be very expensive. It was going to be expensive either way. Whether Tillis was in or not, we were going to spend a lot of money there.”
More from National Review’s wide-ranging interview with Thune soon.