Another North Carolina Paper Slams Tillis on Failing to Protect $80M for Military Construction Projects: “Tillis Meekly Acquiesced in the Money Grab”

$80 million “hit to [North Carolina] military installations” comes as Tillis spends $2.2 million on TV ads to fend off primary threat & Cook Political Report shifts race towards Democrats

A blistering editorial from the Fayetteville Observer this weekend slammed vulnerable Senator Thom Tillis for his failure to stand up to President Trump’s $80 million cash grab from North Carolina’s military installations. Tillis lost his credibility among North Carolina Republicans after the “Olympic gold flip-flop” that enabled this massive raid on funding for critical military construction projects around the state and across the country.

The editorial notes that Tillis — underwater with Democrats and Republicans alike — was “met with a chorus of boos” at a recent GOP rally and is facing a primary challenge from a self-funding conservative businessman, forcing Tillis to spend nearly half his cash on hand on TV ads (where he wasn’t even able to drown out the boos he faced from North Carolina GOP voters). As the “warning signs” continue to mount for Senator Tillis, the Cook Political Report has shifted this race in Democrats’ direction.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Fayetteville Observer: Our View: Tillis did not stand up to Trump for state’s military funding

September 21, 2019

Key Points:

• U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis received a rude reminder the Republican Party now belongs to Donald Trump at a rally for Trump held on Sept. 9 in Fayetteville.

• The first-term Republican senator and former state legislator was met with a chorus of boos that easily equaled the applause when he appeared on the undercard for Trump.

• Tillis faces a difficult re-election campaign in 2020, which includes a Republican primary challenge from wealthy businessman and author Garland Tucker III.

• So, Tillis had to pay respect to Trump. Our problem, however, is what else he felt he needed to pay for the president’s support.

• The Trump Administration is grabbing money from the U.S. military budget, including funds designated for Fort Bragg, to help pay for the wall along the Southern border with Mexico. Tillis meekly acquiesced in the money grab.

• The hit to our state’s military installations is $80 million, based on a list of cuts submitted earlier this month by the Pentagon. In total, our fighting men and women, and their families and communities, will sacrifice as much as $3.6 billion for Trump’s wall. Thirty-four installations in the continental U.S. will be affected, as well as bases in U.S. territories.

• In North Carolina, projects designated to lose money include an ambulatory care center and a new battalion complex at Camp Lejeune, and a new storage facility for the KC-46 tanker planes at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

• But Fort Bragg has ongoing and chronic funding needs and could have found use for those funds, especially after enduring, along with the rest of the armed forces, years of tight budgets.

• At the top of the list is a new fire station at Pope Army Airfield projected to cost $21 million, which is notably, less than the money grabbed for the wall. The current station is in disrepair.

• Tillis should defend our state’s military funding with at least the same vigor. Our soldiers, families and military communities deserve that much, and more.

Read the full editorial here.

Read more about the “self-inflicted wounds” and failures of leadership that have cost Tillis his credibility and made him increasingly vulnerable heading into 2020:

Greensboro News & Record Editorial: “The loss of funds could also hurt Tillis, who is up for re-election next year, and who in March voted to support the dubious emergency declaration that Trump is using to justify his raid on military construction funds… North Carolina won’t be the only state suffering because of Trump’s tantrum, but it’s one of the hardest hit.”

Charlotte Observer Editorial: “The $80 million in N.C. cuts were more than in any other state with a GOP senator facing reelection in 2020. Trump’s wall already was the source of one of the senator’s weakest moments… Now that decision will doubly haunt him.”

Cook Political Report: “The state’s changing political landscape forces Tillis to walk a fine. As a result, he doesn’t seem to please either side. Many Republicans don’t believe that he is conservative enough, while Democrats argue that he is too conservative. It doesn’t help that he has some self-inflicted wounds… The bottom line is that voters of all ideological stripes simply don’t trust Tillis.”

The Hill: “The advertisements, beginning more than a year before November’s election, are another sign that Tillis is among the most vulnerable senators up for reelection in 2020. The ad buy represents a substantial chunk of Tillis’s available cash — his campaign reported $4.3 million in the bank as of the end of June, the last time candidates were required to disclose their fundraising to the Federal Election Commission.”

Charlotte Observer: “The ad… appears designed to blunt criticism from within his own party. When Tillis was introduced at Trump’s Fayetteville rally last week for Republican Dan Bishop, some in the audience booed. And polls have shown him in trouble with some GOP voters… ‘If anyone needed a sign that Tillis is vulnerable in a primary, this ad is a flashing red light,’ said analyst Jennifer Duffy of the non-partisan Cook Political Report.”

The Hill: “When he took the stage at one of Trump’s rallies in Fayetteville, N.C., last week, the boos from some in the audience weren’t necessarily how a first-term Republican senator facing a primary challenge would hope to be received…  Tillis’s critics say the ad campaign is a sign of growing concern about his standing among the state’s conservative primary voters. One North Carolina Republican official familiar with the Senate race said that many core GOP voters in the state are ‘disaffected’ by Tillis.”

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