Senator Thom Tillis’s surprise decision to forego a re-election bid next year resets the Republican primary in politically competitive North Carolina and will thin the chamber’s GOP conference of one of its more independent-minded members.
Tillis’s retirement, which he announced Sunday after voting against advancing a sweeping reconciliation measure President Donald Trump favors, “introduces even more uncertainty and chaos into a race that was already very uncertain and very chaotic,” Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, said in an interview.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter shifted its rating of the North Carolina Senate contest ...