WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis regrets nothing.
Last week, President Joe Biden signed into law a historic bill that federally protects the marriages of same-sex and interracial couples. Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, helped ensure that the bill passed through Congress.
His willingness to work with Democrats on bills like the Respect for Marriage Act and a major gun bill signed this year or an immigration proposal that is now in the works, has left some constituents questioning his loyalty.
“Voters are tired of sending elected representatives to Washington who betray their values,” Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the NC Values Coalition, said in a fundraising email for her organization. “We need true leaders who stand for truth and their constituents’ values. Instead, Senators Tillis and Burr are charting a collision course with their base voters.”
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But Tillis said his bipartisan outreach goes back as far as 2009. He said in a recent interview that he’s nearly always, throughout his career, worked across the aisle to get meaningful policy created and he can’t think of an instance of having regrets.
“I think now more than ever, that we have to look at opportunities to lead by example because the country is in rough shape,” Tillis explained. “There are problems that we can solve — yes, it puts you out of your political comfort zone — but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s political.”
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In 2012, under Tillis’ leadership as North Carolina House speaker, the General Assembly approved a constitutional amendment defining same-sex marriage as being between a man and a woman.
“We had over 75 members, I believe, including Democrats, that wanted to put it on the ballot and let it go to a vote of the people, and I allowed that to happen at that time,” Tillis recalled.
Tillis told a group of students at N.C. State in 2012 that he believed the state’s same-sex marriage ban would be repealed within 20 years because young people are more supportive of the unions. He’s repeated that prediction in interviews throughout the debate on the Respect for Marriage Act. Two years after voters approved the ballot referendum, a Supreme Court ruling in 2014 recognized same-sex marriage in North Carolina.
But many people remember Tillis’ role in the 2012 vote, so his support for the Respect for Marriage Act took some by surprise.
“I felt like we had an opportunity to provide certainty to almost a million people, or 600,000 couples, who are relying on a Supreme Court decision,” Tillis said.
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In July, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — the precedent that protected Americans’ rights to an abortion. Simultaneously, Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote an opinion calling for the country’s highest court to reexamine its landmark cases and named a same-sex marriage case as one of those.
Democrats saw Thomas’ comments as a warning shot that Congress needed to take up that topic and others, and issue federal protections to prevent the justices from stripping people of their rights.
Six of the nine justices received appointments to the bench from Republican presidents.
The original version of the Respect for Marriage Act passed the U.S. House in July, 267-157, with 47 Republicans voting differently from the majority of their party. None of North Carolina’s House Republicans were among that group.
And Tillis said last week, had the bill stayed in its original form, he wouldn’t have supported it either. Tillis said one motivation in passing the bill was to protect the freedom of married couples.
He added that he also felt it was a good opportunity to advance religious liberty and freedoms, and his amendment gained the endorsement of some Christian churches and First Amendment groups. He said he wouldn’t have supported the House version because it had virtually no protections for those groups.
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As for the criticism, Tillis said he knows there’s more that needs to be done to protect religious groups, but for him that feels outside the contours of the bill.
Democratic senators needed 10 Republicans to agree to pass the Respect for Marriage bill with the amendment to get it through the chamber and back to the House for final approval.
It passed the Senate on Nov. 29, 61-36. Both Tillis and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina’s other Republican senator, supported the bill.
When it went back to the House on Dec. 8, representatives again passed the bill, this time, 258-169. North Carolina’s House Republicans didn’t budge on their opposition.
Tillis said his staff takes the majority of the bruising from his constituents for his actions. But he said when he goes home and explains his rationale, the majority of voters understand.
“Maybe they disagree with one policy, but if they look at the body of work, it’s kind of hard to argue that its a good start for a relatively youngish senator,” the 62-year-old said, and repeated, “relatively,” with a laugh before adding, “I’m old.”
Tillis met with his most recent campaign opponent, Cal Cunningham, on stage at UNC-Chapel Hill last month and discussed what drives him in Congress. He told the audience that he had six years between elections and if all he did during that time was campaign he wasn’t very good at his job. Instead, he said, he wanted to work to create policy that helps Americans, even if that means reaching across the aisle to get it done.
He said last week he stands by that.
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Tillis said some of his most recent policies are already having an effect, including the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the largest gun bill to pass Congress in 30 years.
Tillis and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, worked on the bill together following the tragic shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers.
Opponents of the bill worried it would strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights. Tillis said he learned in a briefing with the FBI and the Department of Justice last week the effect the bill is having.
“All the concerns that the Second Amendment advocates have, have not materialized,” Tillis said. “In other words, they’re still processing instant background checks at the same rate they were before the bill got implemented.”
But Tillis said the bill was meaningful. Part of the bill created the ability for juvenile records to be used for criminal background checks for young adults trying to buy firearms.
As of an update he received two weeks ago: “We’ve had 11 people who are under the age of 21 who went to buy a weapon and they had serious mental health adjudications or criminal background checks,” Tillis said. “In one case, a person was going to trial, who had just gone to a hearing three days earlier for assault and battery on a police officer, who was going to try and purchase a long gun.”
As a senator, Tillis says he looks to the long game.
“I’m driven to look at future opportunities based on the body of work that I’ve done at this point,” Tillis said, “and there’s nothing that I’ve been involved in that I’ve regretted, and actually, I don’t think there’s anything I’ve been involved in that’s ever been repealed or substantially modified, so that means it has staying power.”
