NC Sen. Thom Tillis does not plan to run again for any public office, he tells ABC

Danielle Battaglia, The News & Observer (Raleigh) on Mar 24, 2026

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Sen. Thom Tillis said he will not run for public office again.

He made that statement in an interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl released Monday.

Tillis, 65, a Republican from Huntersville, announced his retirement from the U.S. Senate last summer after sparring with President Donald Trump over protecting North Carolina’s Medicaid coverage. That disagreement spilled over to social media.

Since then, there’s been speculation about what comes next for the senator.

Tillis sat down with Karl for a 23-minute one-on-one interview discussing his career and the current state of politics.

But Tillis’ career trajectory came up near the end of the interview when Karl asked, “How are you going to be remembered?”

“I have no earthly idea,” Tillis said, before adding, “The only thing I care about being remembered by, is a good husband; a good father.”

That’s when Karl quickly followed with, “Are you ever going to run for office again?”

Without hesitation, Tillis said no.

He then explained that he had to talk himself into a second term in the Senate.

“The timing, I think, was right for me to retire,” Tillis said. “Everybody talks about how they want term limits, and then they go, ‘Well, we want you to run again.’ So everybody wants term limits on everybody but the person they like.”

Tillis said the best thing someone can do is term-limit themselves.

“And don’t be so arrogant as to think you’re the only person in the state of North Carolina that can be an effective senator,” Tillis said. “I’m convinced there are hundreds of people in North Carolina that would have been better senators than me. They just didn’t run.”

Tillis, who formerly worked for IBM and as a partner at Pricewaterhouse, first came to public office in 2002 on the Cornelius Board of Commissioners, after pushing for a bike trail on the town’s park board.

He ran for the N.C. House in 2006, then became instrumental, in 2010, flipping the chamber’s majority to Republican. His colleagues rewarded with him by naming him House speaker. In 2014, he ran against Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, and defeated her, going on to serve two terms in the Senate.

Tillis initially planned to run for a third term, but dropped his reelection campaign following his public dispute with Trump.

In Karl’s interview, Tillis said he still believes he has “a healthy relationship” with the president, and that Trump has been “very good” to him “at a personal level.”

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