POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
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The NC Senate race was stable. Then came Tillis’ positive test and Cunningham’s sexts.
North Carolina’s key U.S. Senate race remained reliably stable for months, despite millions in spending from the candidates and outside partisan groups hoping to win a critical victory in the fight for control of the chamber.
That all changed Friday night.
In a remarkable three-hour period, incumbent Thom Tillis announced he’d tested positive for the coronavirus, and the challenger leading in the polls, Cal Cunningham, confirmed the authenticity of romantic text messages with a woman that is not his wife.
Now, to borrow from our text-infused language, shrug emoji.
“I was saying that something big would have to change for Cunningham to not be the favorite and clearly the question is, is this that thing?” said Chris Cooper, the head of the political science department at Western Carolina University.
Tillis, a Republican, has all but paused his campaign after his positive test for coronavirus. He is one of several Republican elected officials, including President Donald Trump, to contract the virus. Tillis said he will self-isolate for 10 days and that his staff members are being tested.
Cunningham, a Democrat who has led in polls throughout the summer and announced an eye-popping, record-setting $28.3 million in donations for the past three months on Thursday, no doubt faces many more questions about his relationship with a California public relations strategist.
Thursday’s third and final debate between the candidates feels like it was a year ago. And the mid-October confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett — which were expected to be the last real chance to stir up the race — seem a lifetime away.
“Clearly it’s a blow for the Cunningham campaign. And he’s got a challenge now to come out and make a convincing case that he can still represent North Carolina on health care and economic growth and education issues he’s raised,” said Ferrel Guillory, founder of the Program on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Election Day is Nov. 3, but more than 340,000 North Carolina voters have already cast their absentee by-mail ballot, the majority coming from registered Democrats. In-person early voting begins Oct. 15.
Libertarian nominee Shannon Bray and Constitution Party candidate Kevin Hayes are also running for U.S. Senate.
Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the 100-member Senate, but Democrats have grown increasingly confident that they could gain control. North Carolina is key to both parties’ route to a Senate majority — and that’s been a major part of the campaign, with both candidates accusing the other of being a “rubber stamp” for party leadership.
CUNNINGHAM: ‘TAKING COMPLETE RESPONSIBILITY’
Late Friday night, Cunningham’s campaign confirmed the authenticity of text messages purported to be between Cunningham and Arelene Guzman Todd, a California woman.
The text messages were first reported by NationalFile.com. In the messages, Cunningham and Todd talk about kissing and setting up a time to meet each other. Some messages indicate they have known each other for a while.
It is unclear when the texts were sent, but in one Cunningham references he is “nervous about the next 100 days.” One hundred days before the election would indicate the message was sent in late July.
Cunningham did not address the text messages specifically in an emailed statement, but said, “I have hurt my family, disappointed my friends, and am deeply sorry, The first step in repairing those relationships is taking complete responsibility, which I do,” he said.
He is not dropping out of the race.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which endorsed Cunningham in the primary, is continuing to run television ads in support of Cunningham.
“I remain grateful and humbled by the ongoing support that North Carolinians have extended in this campaign, and in the remaining weeks before this election I will continue to work to earn the opportunity to fight for the people of our state,” Cunningham said in his statement.
It is the only public comment Cunningham or his campaign have made about the issue. In his statement, he said, “I ask that my privacy be respected in this personal matter.”
The News & Observer has asked his campaign questions related to the issue.
Given the pace and seriousness of the news — more than 209,000 people have died of coronavirus and Trump remains hospitalized with the disease — how will voters judge Cunningham’s scandal, especially in light of other sex-related issues involving prominent politicians in recent years?
“Times have changed. When you have the president being caught having an affair with a porn star and paying her off, what Cunningham did seems almost quaint in comparison,” Whitney Ross Manzo, a political scientist at Meredith College told The Charlotte Observer.
Unlike Trump, however, Cunningham made his character and public service a central part of his campaign. The 47-year-old married father of two often talks about how “growing up in Lexington taught me about hard work, sacrifice and being a good neighbor.”
Cunningham joined the U.S. Army Reserve shortly after 9/11, was deployed to Iraq (2007-08) and Afghanistan (2010-11) and earned a Bronze Star. He is a lieutenant colonel in the Judge Advocate General Corps.
“In the Army, I took on corrupt government contractors, and as a Senator, I’ll bring that same zeal to fighting corruption in Washington,” Cunningham wrote in an Oct. 1 tweet.
In September, strategists for both campaigns said suburban women were moving against Trump and other Republican candidates, including in North Carolina.
“Suburban-based, college-educated female voters are going to be a little bit tougher for Republicans to get than they were in 2016,” Tillis consultant Paul Shumaker told The News & Observer in September.
Will the revelations that Cunningham, in his own words “hurt my family,” have an impact with those voters? Will it be big enough to shake up a race that Cunningham has led by low- to high-single digits in poll after poll after poll?
“This cuts against the portrayal of him. It’s not going to play well with suburban women and it’s not going to play well with anybody who bought into Cal Cunningham as the savior of the Democratic Party in the South,” Cooper said, adding that if more allegations were to emerge it would drag Cunningham through additional news cycles.
“He’s going to be looking back at barbecue-gate with fond eyes,” he said, referring to a light-hearted social media stir Cunningham was involved in earlier in the week about the difference between “barbecue” and “grilling” in North Carolina.
TILLIS: ‘HALTING ALL IN-PERSON CAMPAIGN EVENTS’
The issue that was driving those Tillis voters away, according to political advisers, was coronavirus. The Cunningham texts came hours after Trump left the White House for a stay at Walter Reed Medical Hospital due to coronavirus and Tillis announced he was positive.
Trump, Tillis and other prominent GOP government officials who have announced they are positive attended a White House event for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Sept. 26. Though Tillis wore a face mask during the outside event, he was not wearing any facial covering in photographs of the indoor events published by The New York Times.
In numerous telephone town hall events since March, Tillis pushed for constituents to wear masks, chastising those who didn’t and conducting polls on the calls to see how many were wearing masks when they went out in public.
“Those of you who watched the videos of those young people at spring break, remember the emotions? When I look at someone out in public without a mask on, I think of them the same way as the young people on spring break,” Tillis said during an April 9 town hall event.
But the Barrett event at the White House was not the first time he was spotted without a mask at a large gathering. During Trump’s acceptance speech at the White House in late August, Tillis wasn’t wearing a mask the entire time.
“I’ve stressed the importance of mask wearing throughout this pandemic and have tried to lead by example on this issue, but last night I fell short of my own standard,” Tillis said in a statement at that time.
Cooper, from Western Carolina, said Tillis’ actions during the pandemic may help blunt much criticism in this case, especially given the anti-mask stance of others in his party.
“He’s not been a denier. He’s not questioned the validity of masks. In the universe of Republican national politicians, Tillis has been among the most responsible,” Cooper said.
It has already been an unusual campaign season with limited in-person events for candidates up and down the ballot, though Trump had begun holding larger rallies in recent weeks. Tillis has mostly done small in-person roundtable events with specific industry leaders, such as law enforcement or business leaders.
The Tillis campaign announced Friday night it was closing its Charlotte campaign headquarters and “halting all in-person campaign events until further notice.”
Tillis’ Senate office announced Sunday night the senator was experiencing a loss of sense of taste and smell, but that other mild symptoms from Saturday had improved.
No other members of his campaign staff had tested positive as of Saturday. Tillis’ wife, Susan, tested negative, as did Cunningham, who participated in the Thursday night debate with Tillis.
His 10-day timeline for self-isolation would allow him to return to Washington in time for Barrett’s confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had been seen as the biggest event before the election. Those hearings are set to begin Oct. 12, though more positive coronavirus tests from U.S. senators could change that.
The campaign has thus far declined to comment on the Cunningham text messages, saying only that “we were surprised to read the news,” in a Saturday statement from campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo.
“Our campaign is focused on the health of Senator Tillis and our staff,” Romeo said in a statement to The News & Observer.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
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