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Thom Tillis on Principles & Values |
Tillis: Disagree.
Question topic: Judeo-Christian values established a framework of morality which permitted our system of limited government.
Tillis: Strongly Agree.
Question topic: Briefly describe your spiritual beliefs and values.
Tillis: Catholic.
Tillis aides concede that Hagan has gotten a head start raising money and making her pitch to voters, but said voters would come to respect his life story. Tillis, they said, grew up in a trailer park and is a "self-made man."
"Only one candidate has been telling a story," said a Tillis strategist. "The Thom Tillis story has yet to be told."
Tillis's campaign, meanwhile, has called Hagan a "rubber stamp" for Obama's policies, chiding her for her vote supporting the president's health-care overhaul. The voters' negative feelings toward Obama, Tillis aides say, will help mobilize the Republican base. "North Carolinians are really not happy with the direction our country is going in," Keylin said.
The Republican is returning to the story of his political roots as he campaigns for the US Senate. "I've only been in office since 2007," he said after filing his candidacy papers last week. "I served for a small time in the town of Cornelius. I was PTA president 8 years ago."
The effort is designed to portray Tillis as the candidate who can deliver results and push back against his label as the establishment candidate. But it also highlights his start in state politics in 2006 when he ousted a conservative lawmaker in a GOP primary, 2-term Republican state Rep. John Rhodes. The Tillis-Rhodes race is seared into the minds of some conservative activists; the the leader of the Charlotte Tea Party, said Tillis' effort to beat Rhodes helped sow "a level of distrust among conservatives."
Tillis is one of Gov. Pat McCrory's closest allies and helped engineer majorities in the state House and Senate for the GOP in 2010. McCrory is the state's first Republican governor since 1993.
Democrats and others frustrated by the sharp turn to the right participated in a series of protests dubbed "Moral Mondays" throughout the General Assembly session. Ministers, teachers and other activists participated in the protests, which migrated to Charlotte and other cities.