LARA TRUMP WOULD HAVE BEEN THE NORTH CAROLINA SENATE CANDIDATE NO MATTER WHAT

Many Democrats will see North Carolina senator Thom Tillis as a hero:

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Sunday that the Senate version of President Trump’s massive spending bill “will betray the very promise” the president made when he pledged not to interfere with people’s Medicaid benefits.

Tillis — who voted against the bill in a key procedural vote Saturday night and announced Sunday he would not run for reelection — delivered a scathing rebuke of the president’s agenda-setting bill in a Senate floor speech....

“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore, guys? I think the people in the White House… advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise,” Tillis said in his floor speech.

But don't be too hasty to put Tillis on a pedestal.

Tillis ... said he would be inclined to support the House version of the Medicaid proposal....

“I love the work requirement. I love the other reforms in this bill. They are necessary, and I appreciate the leadership of the House for putting it in there,” he continued.

“In fact, I like the work of the House so much that I wouldn’t be having to do this speech if we simply started with the House mark....”

So it's good that he broke with the president and Senate leaders, but he's still a Republican. He still has Republican values.

I'm seeing claims that this improves Democrats' chances of taking Tillis's Senate seat in 2026, but I don't believe he would have been the GOP nominee if he'd run again. I know who's certain to be the nominee now if, as appears likely, she runs:

There might soon be another elected Trump in Washington.

President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is “seriously considering” a Senate run in her native North Carolina, a source told NOTUS. Another source close to the Trump family told NBC News that there is a “high” chance she will run.

The NBC reporter says:

A source close to the Trump family says Lara Trump is "strongly considering jumping in the race."

Asked about the odds that she runs for #NCSEN to replace Tillis, the source says: “I’d put it as high as one could be considering it…The race will be over before it begins."

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) June 29, 2025

If Tillis had stayed in the race, Lara Trump probably would have trounced him in a primary, according to one poll conducted in November:

A new poll by Victory Insights reveals shifting dynamics for the 2026 U.S. Senate race in North Carolina....

The poll shows Trump securing 65% of support, outpacing Tillis, who garners just 11%. Approximately 24% of respondents remain undecided. Victory Insights suggests that Trump’s appeal among grassroots conservatives gives her a strong advantage, particularly given dissatisfaction with Tillis among some pro-Trump Republicans.

“A substantial portion of the Republican base believes Tillis to be insufficiently conservative on several issues,” said Dr. Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. “Delegates to the 2023 North Carolina Republican Convention voted to censure Tillis over his supposed deviances from the party platform.”

We're told that those "supposed deviances" include " support for gay marriage and immigration reform."

So Lara Trump would have shellacked Tillis in a primary. What about a general-election matchup against the Democrats' strongest potential candidate, former governor Roy Cooper? It's a tossup -- and a Tillis-Cooper race would also have been a tossup:

In the poll, a matchup between Roy Cooper and Thom Tillis shows Cooper leading Tillis by a narrow margin of 1.1%, with 45.1% of the vote compared to Tillis’s 44.1%. If Cooper were to face Lara Trump, his edge is slightly larger at 1.2%, with 45.5% compared to Trump’s 44.3%.

This will be a referendum on Donald Trump, who's significantly underwater in some North Carolina polling (41%-56% according to a Meredith College survey conducted in April), but only slightly underwater in other polls (42%-45% according to Elon University in March, 45.5%-50.8% according to Carolina Journal in May). As horrible as the actions of the Trump administration are, I don't expect these numbers to change much in the next year and four months. So this race is a tossup. Republicans will probably nominate the candidate they would have nominated anyway, and voters will mostly stay in their lanes.