Tillis, Thom, 1960-
Thomas Roland Tillis (born August 30, 1960) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from North Carolina since 2015. A Republican, he was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 2006, and began serving as the speaker in 2011. He was elected to the United States Senate in 2014, defeating Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan, and reelected in 2020, defeating Democratic nominee Cal Cunningham.
As speaker of the state House of Representatives, Tillis led the Republican effort to block the expansion of Medicaid and worked to introduce restrictions on abortion, stringent voting requirements, and a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In the Senate, he has repeatedly voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act; he introduced a bill intended to protect coverage for preexisting conditions but it was undermined by loopholes and failed to match the ACA's protections. On immigration, he proposed a 15-year pathway to citizenship for some undocumented youth as a more conservative alternative to the bipartisan DREAM Act. He initially opposed President Trump's national emergency declaration to divert funding to a border wall, but voted for it after pressure from his party. Having previously denied that climate change is occurring, he has since acknowledged it, but opposes the Paris Agreement and the Clean Power Plan.
Tillis was born in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Margie and Thomas Raymond Tillis, a boat draftsman. He was the oldest boy among six children, with three older sisters. One of his brothers, Thomas Richard "Rick" Tilllis, served in the Tennessee House of Representatives. By age 17, his family had moved 20 times, and Tillis never attended the same school in consecutive years, living in New Orleans and Nashville, among other places.
Following his 1978 graduation from high school, Tillis left home to get a job. He then attended Chattanooga State Community College before receiving a Bachelor of Science in technology management from the University of Maryland University College in 1996.
After high school, Tillis worked at Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co. in Chattanooga, Tennessee, helping computerize records in conjunction with Wang Laboratories, a computer company in Boston. Wang eventually hired Tillis to work in its Boston office. He spent two and a half years there before being transferred back to Chattanooga, and then Atlanta. In 1990, he was recruited to work for accounting and consulting firm Price Waterhouse.[8][9] In 1996, Tillis was promoted to partner. In 1998, he and his family moved to Cornelius, North Carolina.
PricewaterhouseCoopers sold its consulting arm to IBM in 2002 and Tillis went to IBM as well. Tillis began his political career in 2002 in Cornelius, as he pushed for a local bike trail and was elected to the town's park board. He ran for town commissioner in 2003 and tied for second place.
