Sen. Thom Tillis’s (R-NC) midterm advice for his possible successor, Republican nominee Michael Whatley, is to be a little more like him.
That is, to know when to disagree with President Donald Trump and appeal to unaffiliated voters who are crucial to the GOP’s efforts to maintain the battleground Senate seat from which the two-term centrist is retiring.
“I support the vast majority of the president’s policy, but I think anybody who is hesitant to disagree with things that are objectively not popular in North Carolina has to be out of their mind,” Tillis told the Washington Examiner, citing “distractions” in Washington, such as Trump’s Kennedy Center name change battle and plans to build a towering “triumphal” arch.
Tillis’s comments came Wednesday in the hours before Trump was set to stump with Whatley at a campaign rally in the Charlotte suburb of Gastonia.
“People are struggling to make ends meet, and we’re talking about spending tens of millions of dollars on things that it just doesn’t make sense,” Tillis said. “I think you have a healthy disagreement. There [is] some binary thinking around where if you disagree once, you’re disloyal, and whoever thinks that way is — let’s just say politically inexperienced.”
Whatley, facing former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, is running his first campaign for public office but is the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Trump ally who remains closely aligned on policy. The seat is among the most likely to flip this November and leans in Cooper’s favor, thanks in large part to a polling and fundraising advantage.
“Silence is consent,” Tillis said. “The perception is going to be you support some of these distractions.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Whatley campaign for comment.
The Whatley event will mark the first campaign rally for Trump since the party’s midterm convention last week in Dallas, where the president offered a preview of his anti-Cooper rhetoric. He referred to Cooper in one of his speeches as a “radical left politician posing as a moderate” while also acknowledging electoral headwinds in the Tar Heel State, where the Democrat has won statewide elections six times as governor and attorney general.
“In North Carolina, you have a little more difficult case, because people don’t quite get it, but they’re going to find out,” Trump said of the case against Cooper.
Tillis has for months suggested Whatley make a post-primary pivot toward the center in an appeal to North Carolina’s roughly 40% of unaffiliated registered voters who have begun early voting. His current assessment is that Whatley has “clearly got headwinds” amid energized left-leaning voters.
MICHAEL WHATLEY STICKS CLOSE TO TRUMP IN BATTLE AGAINST ROY COOPER
Tillis’s offers to stump for Whatley have not been embraced, according to the senator, but he has helped with fundraising. He offered a final word of caution ahead of Whatley appearing with Trump.
“I’ve told them, tell me how I can help,” Tillis said. “I’d love to have a Republican replace me. I think it’s good to get a base that may be suppressed, but we got to be careful with what’s said, because … the math doesn’t work unless you resonate with the unaffiliated.”