North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who pissed off almost everyone with his flip-flop on Trump’s bogus emergency declaration, already faces a GOP primary challenge from wealthy businessman Garland Tucker, but the anti-establishment Club for Growth is still trying to recruit a different opponent. Club president David McIntosh told Politico this week that they were interested in seeing Rep. Mark Walker run, and they would “wait and see if a race develops and explore if Rep. Mark Walker would make a stronger general election candidate.”
Walker announced in late April that he wouldn’t take on Tillis, but he may be leaving the door open to changing his mind. Walker’s spokesperson said that his boss was “humbled to have the support and consideration of conservatives across North Carolina,” and added, “What we hear on the ground is what is confirmed in these results: our state wants a senator who will support President Trump and his conservative agenda. For now, Walker is focused on delivering for the people of the Old North State.” As Politico notes, this statement isn’t a no.
However, while Walker could end up running after all, there are a few reasons why he perhaps shouldn’t. North Carolina law only requires a primary runoff if no candidates takes at least 30% of the vote, so if both Walker and Tucker are on the ballot, they could split the anti-incumbent vote enough for Tillis to secure the nomination with just a plurality.
Indeed, a new poll of a hypothetical GOP primary for the Club finds that this very scenario could take place. WPA Intelligence finds Tillis taking 40% of the vote, while Walker leads Ticker 17-11 for second (Some Dude Sandy Smith secures 2%). In a head-to-head matchup, Tillis leads Walker by a considerably smaller 43-34 margin; the memo did not include numbers testing just Tucker against Tillis. Note that the poll asked respondents if they “would consider another candidate in a Republican primary” before they get to the head-to-head (52% said they would, while another 18% said they’d definitely vote against Tillis), which may have impacted the results.
Another reason that Tillis’ conservative detractors might want to be hesitant about a Walker campaign is that the congressman’s stock took a huge plunge in early April after federal prosecutors indicted North Carolina Republican Party Chair Robin Hayes, as well as GOP donor Greg Lindberg and two of his associates, for their part in an alleged bribery scheme. The indictment didn't mention Walker by name, but Politico quickly identified him as "Public Official A," whom Lindberg's associates said had been "trying to help us move the ball forward." Walker has denied any wrongdoing.
National Republicans have also made it very clear that they’ll help Tillis fend off an intra-party challenge. Earlier this week, Politico reported that the NRSC successfully pressured the pollster McLaughlin & Associates to drop Tucker as a client. Of course, given McLaughlin’s history of high-profile misses, which continued into the 2018 election cycle, Tillis’ allies probably would have been doing the senator a favor if they’d kept quiet and let Tucker keep his pollster, but we digress.
National GOP groups aren’t just stopping there, though. The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker writes that the Senate Leadership Fund, which is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s well-funded super PAC, is prepared to run TV ads against Tucker that highlight his past opposition to Trump. While Tucker, who wrote in 2016 that Trump was “a twice-divorced, self-acknowledged adulterer who has, in the course of this campaign, uttered some of the most unkind, disgusting comments ever made by any American politician,” gives Tillis’ allies an easy avenue of attack, it’s unlikely that they’d go easy on Walker if they thought he was a threat.
Democrats would love a bloody GOP primary in this competitive state, but it still remains to be seen whom Team Blue will field here. WRAL reported on May 10 that multiple unnamed sources "expect" former state Treasurer Janet Cowell to get in, and she'd decide "in the coming days." However, we haven’t heard anything new about a possible Cowell campaign in the last two weeks.
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