Thom Tillis

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Thom Tillis (2016)

Thomas Roland "Thom" Tillis (* 30th August 1960 in Jacksonville , Florida ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . He has represented the state of North Carolina in the US Senate since January 3, 2015 .

Family, education and work

Tillis is the third of six siblings and the first son of Thomas Raymond "Ray" Tillis, a technical draftsman for boat building and craftsmen, and the housewife Margie Tillis. The family suffered from financial problems and moved frequently, especially on the Gulf Coast , including between Jacksonville (Florida) , a suburb of New Orleans and Antioch (Tennessee) , so that Tillis temporarily changed schools every year and lived in a trailer park . Tillis became Head Boy last year of Antioch High School and graduated in 1978. He then joined the United States Air Force but was honorable discharged before his service after a serious car accident. Tillis first worked in a file warehouse and continued his technological education. From 1981 he worked in Chattanooga for the file management of an insurance company and excelled in entering and organizing thousands of records in an early mainframe computer . Since then he has worked for the information technology industry, including as a project developer for Wang Global in Boston and Atlanta and later in a suburb of Washington, DC , where he worked for the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers . Tillis became a partner in this company in 1996 and graduated from Chattanooga State Community College in 1997 with a bachelor's degree. He ended his subsequent work at IBM from 2002 in 2009 to concentrate on his political career.

Tillis and his wife Susan, whom he married in late 1980, have a son and a daughter. You have lived in Cornelius in Mecklenburg County , which belongs to the metropolitan area of Charlotte , since 1998 .

Political career

Tillis, who mentions hiking and mountain biking as leisure pursuits, campaigned for the establishment of a mountain bike path in his hometown in 2002 and therefore became involved in local politics for the first time. In 2003 Tillis was elected to the city council of Cornelius and was a member of it until 2005. From 2007 to 2014 he was a member of the State House of Representatives for the 98th electoral district, which includes the (republican-influenced) northern part of Mecklenburg County, after he had defeated the electorate John W. Rhodes in the Republican area code with 1805: 1061 votes; in the main election and in the following elections he remained unopposed. The victory of the Republicans in the North Carolina State Legislature in 2010, in which they achieved majorities in both chambers for the first time since 1870, is attributed to his personal and organizational commitment . Tillis was Speaker of Parliament from January 2011 - the second Republican since 1900. As such, he often served as an intermediary between Governor Pat McCrory and the Chairman of the State Senate , Phil Berger . At the same time, Tillis, who is otherwise certified to have a pragmatic, process-oriented political style, initiated a political shift to the right in the work of parliament, which earned him the 2011 “Legislator of the Year” award from the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council .

Tillis during a video address about the vacancy in the Supreme Court judge's post of the late Antonin Scalia (2016)

In the election on November 4, 2014 , Tillis ran against the Democrat Kay Hagan , who had previously held one of North Carolina's two seats in the US Senate. Tillis was a federal party favorite and received financial support from outside groups such as the Republican super-PAC American Crossroads and the United States Chamber of Commerce . He prevailed against Hagan with 49 to 47.3 percent of the vote. Tillis has been exercising his mandate since January 3, 2015 and is a member of five Senate committees ( Agriculture , Armed Forces , Justice , Veterans Affairs and Aging ) and a total of ten sub-committees.

Positions

The website OnTheIssues describes Tillis as a "Hard-Core Conservative". Tillis is particularly conservative in socio-political terms, for example when it comes to rejecting abortion ( pro-life ), same-sex marriage and restrictions on gun ownership , while in 2016 he advocated the death penalty for police murderers. In terms of fiscal policy, Tillis stands for austerity ; he has called for the abolition of the US Department of Education , whose employees are overpaid bureaucrats. On the other hand, he calls for a reduction in corporate income taxes and a complete abolition of the Obamacare health care reform . He also called for drug testing for government aid recipients.

Tillis is considered one of the architects of the "conservative revolution" in North Carolina, after the Republicans had in 2010 won a majority in both houses of local state Senate and, from the tea party movement supported significant limitations, among others, the abortion and the right to vote prevailed . In the United States Senate, Tillis remained true to his line of support for the Republican tax reform, among other things, but caused a sensation through bipartisan initiatives and joint bills with Democratic senators, including the proposal of permanent residence status for those immigrants who came to the USA ("Dreamers", see Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ). Tillis has made a name for himself with his immigration-friendly policy, which corresponds to his generally corporate-oriented course. Together with the Democrats Chris Coons he introduced a bill to the dismissal of the special prosecutor Robert Mueller - the Russian influence in the American election campaign in 2016 and possible collusion by Trump's campaign team examined - more difficult. According to FiveThirtyEight , however, Tillis agrees in most cases with President Trump's views (as of April 2018: 95.7 percent agreement).

Web links

Commons : Thom Tillis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ A b c d Greg Lacour: Thom Tillis Is the Strategist. In: Charlotte Magazine , October 17, 2013.
  2. ^ A b c Gregory Lewis McNamee: Thom Tillis. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , May 21, 2015.
  3. ^ A b c d e Reid Wilson: Meet Thom Tillis: 13 things to know about Sen. Kay Hagan's opponent. In: The Washington Post , May 6, 2014.
  4. ^ North Carolina Election Results: Tillis Defeats Hagan. In: The New York Times , November 2014.
  5. ↑ Thom Tillis. In: OnTheIssues.org.
  6. ^ Rob Christensen: Thom Tillis reaching across party lines. In: The News & Observer , October 14, 2017.
  7. ^ Congress Trump Score: Thom Tillis. In: FiveThirtyEight .
personal data
SURNAME Tillis, Thom
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tillis, Thomas Roland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Jacksonville , Florida