Could Control of the Senate Come Down to North Carolina?

Voters in the state say they are more concerned about the political map than Cal Cunningham’s sexting scandal.

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More than 3 million North Carolinians have already voted in what has become one of the most expensive, scandal-ridden Senate races of 2020: a tight matchup between first-term Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, an Army Reserve officer and former military prosecutor who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the GOP’s 53-47 Senate majority hanging by a thread—the incumbents in Maine, Arizona, and Colorado are in serious jeopardy of losing—Republicans are hoping that North Carolina will be the linchpin that prevents Democrats from winning the four seats they need to regain the Senate. (Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama is expected to lose reelection to Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville, adding a slight cushion to the Senate Republicans’ fragile three-seat majority.) 

Though Trump narrowly won the state in 2016, a growing number of unaffiliated voters in North Carolina have moved the once reliably red state into purple territory: Biden is now carrying the state by 1.2 points, according to today’s RealClearPolitics average. 

But the first week of October threw a wrench into Senate Democrats’ plans to unseat Thom Tillis—a fairly anonymous senator who has suffered from consistently poor approval ratings since 2014—with Cal Cunningham, a moderate Democrat who has centered his campaign around health care and his military service. Just hours after Tillis told reporters he had tested positive for COVID-19 on October 2, news broke that Cunningham, a married father of two, was sending romantic text messages to a woman who is not his wife. 

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    rlritt

    "Cunningham, a married father of two, was sending romantic text messages to a woman who is not his wife."

    These days that sounds so old fashioned and cute. I do have to ask why these guys don't realize that if you don't your secrets exposed, DON'T PUT THEM IN AN EMAIL! Jeeze. How idiotic.

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      CynthiaW

      And after that, a second (third?) woman turned up saying that Cunningham was "cheating" on his affair with her when he texted the first (second) woman. He was a busy guy.

      I wasn't going to vote for him anyway, because I disagree on policy.

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    Victor Clairmont

    So if Cal Cunningham wins, boy does the character argument really just not matter anymore to democrats or republicans. There was a time where something of this nature would get one to drop out or resign in disgrace. Now? Just plough through it and win. Damn the character.

    Yikes.

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      Rajeev

      Trump is responsible for a lot of things but not the character argument. Republicans joined the Clinton Democrats a long time ago (and even surpassed them in many ways). If character mattered, Mitch McConnell would have never in his life been able to be a majority leader with 50 elected Republican senators. Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Bill Frist, etc. had allowed for scandal long before Trump ever came along. I'm sure before Bill Clinton there were prominent Dems that had scandals too.

      The reality is all of these Republican senators have supported a man in Donald Trump that is 1000x more scandalous and corrupt than any of their opponents could ever be. They have to wear that scarlet letter and they deserve anything that comes their way because of the enabling and encouragement they have engaged in throughout the past 4 years.

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      rlritt

      No one cares anymore. It happens so frequently, I just assume that most politicians cheat. That's probably why they go into politics, they hope it will help them get women.

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    3. Joe1776

      Didn't we already live through two terms of Bill Clinton as president? When you say "Now?" do you mean in the past 25 years? It may be new for republicans to discount character but the dems stopped caring about cheating, with Jennifer Flowers and even started being fine with Clinton making moves on people who worked for him such as having Paula Jones come to his hotel and exposing himself to her, and of course his intern Monica Lewinski. Not to mention hushing up Juanita Broaddrick.

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        Rajeev

        The Republicans have had more prominent scandals that they have ignored than the Dems ever will. The list of high-profile Republicans with disgusting scandals is a lot longer than the Dems. Most Democrats did stop caring about sex scandals back during the Clinton years; however, Republicans never cared to begin with. They only ever cared about scandals that were outside of them. Their behavior mimicked that of the Catholic church. Cover up after cover up and that's been true for at least the past 50 years.

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      Jason Gibson

      A creation of the trump phenomena. Reason number one that I hate it

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      1. Peter

        Yea Trump has made cheating not as an important criteria.

        When you elect leaders who lower the standards...this is the outcome.

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      Scarlette Tarte

      Or, it could be that voters now have to vote "sliding scale" on character. Sure, his is not stellar, but is he better than Trump and the Republicans?

      Obvious answer is yes.

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        Patrick

        But he’s not running against “Trump and the Republicans.” He’s running against Thom Tillis.

        I don’t live in NC, so I’m not following this race too closely. But I do think it’s a problem that many voters think they should vote R or D in every local race based on how they view the President.

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          Rajeev

          Tillis has been part of the worst enabling of his party to become a dangerous conspiracy theory party that ignores public health and nominates fringe candidates. He's not an innocent observer, he's had plenty of chances to show his supposed character and has failed over and over again.

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        2. Peter

          thats not necessarily true, senate elections have a national component. Folks are quite aware that this impacts the outcome of the senate.

          Think its just the nature of politics now.

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          rlritt

          And are we sure that Tillis's isn't cheating on his wife? He may be just more careful about his emails.

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        Jason Gibson

        You might be right there. Any republican that wins this year should count themselves lucky and change their ways

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      Nick

      Well, this is what happens when McConnell makes everything in the Senate a party-line vote for 10 years. I would struggle to even think of the Senate as 100 different people making their own decisions about issues anymore, just two parties and whoever has a majority holds all the cards. What does a sex scandal or character matter when he'll just be doing whatever Chuck Schumer tells him to do on all the issues Democrats actually care about, like stimulus and healthcare?

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        PaulH

        Do you really think McConnell changed things that much? Reid was a pretty strong senate manager. I think that just in general our politics have gotten much more partisan over the last several decades (though, as Jonah often notes, the parties have gotten weaker). So there is a price to be paid for departing from the party line; but the price is imposed by the electorate not the majority leader (see for example Senator Flake).

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    Pat @ Tavi Hall

    As a Tar Heel, I suspect Cunningham is riding on Cooper's coattails not Biden's. There's a lot of ugly talk about Cooper but he's been measured and clear in his Corona messaging and moves. I've voted for Forest in the past but he's always struck me as a dope. His responses to the pandemic have been ham handed, and I suspect he's a drag on our overall republican ticket. Of course there's also Burr's less than stellar early pandemic activities as well. As Rick noted Tillis is your basic high flyer in our state politics (in many ways the Republican variant of Hagan). NC is an electorate more than willing to vote a split ballot.

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    Rick Henderson

    Tillis is an excellent retail politician and a strong closer. He trailed in every 2014 poll to incumbent Kay Hagan but somehow pulled out a win. Still, I wonder if the Senate leaving town without taking up a stimulus bill will cost the GOP more votes than any Dem outrage about the ACB confirmation process.

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      Nick H

      The pandemic has made retail campaigning harder to do. Hopefully Tillis pulls this out. I'm surprised at how little the sexting/affair scandal has hurt Cunningham. I would think that the suburban mom vote that we hear about abandoning Trump would also be opposing Cunningham, but maybe Tillis has tied himself too closely to Trump for that to happen.

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