RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who trailed in the polls throughout the campaign, was leading Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, giving Republicans a boost in their hopes of retaining control of the U.S. Senate.
Tillis declared victory Tuesday night at his results watch party in Mooresville. Cunningham has not conceded the race nor has The Associated Press called it.
With more than 5.48 million votes counted, Tillis had 48% of the vote and Cunningham had less than 47% of the vote. Libertarian Party candidate Shannon Bray was at about 3% and Constitution Party candidate Kevin Hayes was at 1%.
Tillis, 60, trailed when the results started to come in, but slowly and steadily gained ground on Cunningham before finally overtaking him. Cunningham had a large edge in absentee by-mail ballots, but Tillis led in early in-person voting and in Election Day voting.
There are 117,000 outstanding absentee by-mail ballots, according to the state board. They must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by Nov. 12 to be counted.
If Tillis wins, it would be a massive comeback from a polling standpoint. Cunningham, according to both campaigns, held a solid lead at the end of September before an infidelity scandal upended the race, and had a money advantage. Tillis also trailed in polling throughout his 2014 victory against Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan.
"What we accomplished tonight was a stunning victory. And we did it," Tillis told cheering supporters.
He thanked his supporters, volunteers and staff for "letting everybody know that the truth still does matter, everybody know that character still matters, and let everybody know that keeping your promises still matters."
His narrow lead mirrored that of several Republican statewide candidates and that of President Donald Trump, who held a slim margin over Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Cunningham never made a public appearance at North Carolina Democrats' results-watch party, nor did he talk to the media Tuesday night.
Cunningham, 47, largely avoided the media during the last month of the campaign, preferring instead to meet small groups of voters and avoid questions about alleged affairs. A married father of two, he apologized for the hurt he had caused his family after confirming the authenticity of sexual text messages sent between him and a California woman.
The woman, married to an injured military veteran, told The Associated Press that the pair was intimate as recently as July. Cunningham, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, is under investigation by the Army.
The scandal may have been precisely the break Tillis needed in the race to buck a North Carolina trend and win a second six-year term in the most expensive Senate race ever.
"It was a stubborn race that has been fairly stable, not a lot of movement. Something was going to have to happen to give the race an identify of its own, so that it's not just a microcosm of the national picture, and I think the scandal is what did that," said Jordan Shaw, Tillis' 2014 campaign manager and a consultant for the campaign.
In the final weeks, Tillis attacked Cunningham, casting him as untrustworthy and calling his campaign built around honor and duty "one big lie." It was a sustained month of attacks by Tillis and his allies over the personal scandal, giving Tillis a consistent closing message.
His campaign and allies released television ads, some with military veterans, aimed at undercutting Cunningham's integrity and honesty.
Tillis appeared with high-profile Republicans, including President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the final days of the campaigning, presenting a contrast with Cunningham's lack of public campaign events and media availability.
"Don't go AWOL, which is exactly what he's done for a month," Tillis said during a stop in Charlotte last weekend. "That guy could probably win an Olympic sprint race if he sees a TV camera because he's running from them."
Tillis and Republicans tried a variety of attacks on Cunningham earlier in the campaign — over his critiques of the Paycheck Protection Program, from which his former company received a loan earlier in the pandemic; over his use of a North Carolina tax credit for repairs, including a "butler's pantry," at his historic Raleigh home; over his comment in the first debate that he'd be "hesitant" to take a coronavirus vaccine if it were available before the election; and over his vote as a state senator to raise taxes in North Carolina.
None seemed to stick or gain much traction — until the scandal.
Tillis, a former business executive and speaker of the NC House of Representatives, has spent his entire term as part of a Republican majority in the Senate, the last four with Trump as president.
If he wins reelection, he would join fellow Republicans Jesse Helms and Richard Burr as the only North Carolina senators to do so since 1970.
And that could help keep Republicans in control of the Senate. Tillis said he carried a heavy burden knowing his race "could be the majority maker for the U.S. Senate." Republicans held a 53-47 edge in the Senate entering Tuesday.
Tillis needed to navigate the balance between Trump supporters and moderate voters.
He tried to cultivate a reputation as a problem-solver willing to stand up to the extremes in both parties when it came to the nation's most intractable issues.
But it was never clear that it connected with North Carolinians, particularly in a state with new voters moving in all the time and so many unique media markets. Tillis consistently had one of the lowest favorability ratings among senators.
And the election of Trump in 2016 brought new challenges for his reelection bid, including casting doubt on whether Republicans even wanted that sort of politician representing them. Some portion of the Trump base never warmed to Tillis, who was booed at least two Trump rallies earlier in the cycle.
Tillis tried to create some space from Trump early in the administration, introducing a bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired and vowing to vote an emergency declaration that would allow Trump to move military funds to border wall construction. Tillis quickly reversed himself on that.
In other ways, he was a reliable Trump supporter: helping remake the federal judiciary and Supreme Court as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and fierce defender of Brett Kavanaugh during those contentious hearings; voting for tax cuts and for repeal of the Affordable Care Act; and defending Trump throughout the impeachment process and voting against his conviction.
Tillis filmed a video of him ripping up the articles of impeachment after the vote, an explicit rebuke of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
"If there were Trump voters out there who weren't as fired up to vote for Thom, it's a difference in style. Trump and Tillis are very different people, but they largely aligned on policy initiatives," Shaw said.
On Tuesday night, Tillis was running behind Trump's vote total by less than 1.5% points.
He spent the final months of the campaign playing to the base, warning that Cunningham would be a rubber-stamp for a liberal agenda in the Senate. Tillis said he would continue to support police and law enforcement and defend the Second Amendment.
Cunningham outraised Tillis in the race, part of more than $287 million spent by candidates and outside groups in the election.
Cunningham, an attorney who served one term in the state Senate about 20 years ago, was a prodigious fundraiser in the race, breaking several North Carolina records on his way to building a $47 million war chest. He had the backing of national Democrats, who saw North Carolina as key to flipping the Senate.
He focused on health care, particularly his support for the Affordable Care Act, and the coronavirus pandemic throughout the campaign. Cunningham attacked Tillis for trying to dismantle the health care law and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions and accused him of being more interested in defending special interests than in serving the people of North Carolina.
Tillis said those ads that said he only cared about the wealthy bothered him.
"They were trying to paint me as some guy that only worries about the rich. I don't worry about the rich, ladies and gentlemen. God bless them for being rich," Tillis said. "What I worry about are the people that grew up like me."
Tillis moved around the Southeast as a child, moving seven times before he was 16 years old as his parents moved for work. He said he grew up in a trailer park, a biography Tillis noted in campaign ads at the beginning of the general election. He earned his college degree at 36.
"My job has always been fighting for everybody to have the same opportunity to realize their American dream," Tillis said. "It may not be mine, but whatever they want, I want them to achieve. And I want this country to continue to be that great nation that provides everybody those opportunities."
