Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, will not seek re-election, he said over the weekend after opposing President Donald Trump’s signature reconciliation bill, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
While Tillis liked tax credits and other elements of the legislation, “I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and I cannot support this bill in its current form,” Tillis said Saturday June 28. “It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”
President Trump reportedly threatened to support a GOP primary opponent seeking to unseat Tillis. Tillis then announced in a Sunday press release that he would not seek re-election in November 2026.
“It has been a blessing to go on a journey from living in a trailer park and making minimum wage as a young man to having the honor of serving as U.S. Senator for North Carolina,” Tillis wrote in the statement.
“What I’m most proud of are the bipartisan victories,” Tillis said. “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,” he went on to say.
Tillis was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014 after being speaker of the house in the North Carolina legislature. During his corporate career, Tillis served as an executive for PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM, according to his online biography.
