Ahead of the Senate's historic vote on new gun control measures in the wake of the Uvalde massacre, your dispatcher spoke with one of the most important players in getting the bill Ahead of the Senate's historic vote on new gun control measures in the wake of the Uvalde massacre, your dispatcher spoke with one of the most important players in getting the bill passed: Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Mr Tillis was one of four Senators – along with Republican John Cornyn of Texas as well as Democrats Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – who helped negotiate the first piece of gun legislation to pass and earn a president's signature since 1994.
We spoke with Mr Tillis about how the deal happened, why former president Donald Trump shouldn't oppose it and why decided to oppose Madison Cawthorn. Here are some excerpts.
How the deal came about: Mr Tillis said that one key part of getting the deal done was his and Mr Cornyn's decision to immediately tell the Democrats what was off the table. That included a waiting period, a ban on assault weapons, and a federal red flag law.
"Anytime you see negotiations around here bear fruit," he said, "you tend to be very open, very direct upfront so that you're all of a sudden not negotiating something that completely changes the foundation of the agreement."
Similarly, he said that the other most important factor was not having staff negotiate for them. "So you have to kind of flip the script and have staff there to advise and welcome them to enter the debate, but you have to have members in the room", Mr Tillis said.
Why his relationship with Ms Sinema was so important: Mr Tillis told us that it was the involvement of Ms Sinema, the centrist Democrat from Arizona, that led to him joining negotiations. According to him, she had been looking for another Republican to negotiate with.
"So when I spoke with Sinema, I said that I'd be willing to get into the room, see if we could negotiate an outcome", he said.
For her part, after the bill passed, Ms Sinema – who rarely speaks to the press – had nothing but high praise for the North Carolina Republican.
"Oh, Thom is wonderful", Ms Sinema told your dispatcher Thursday night. "So pragmatic, so focused on solutions. Also a great vote counter. Great whip."
Mr Tillis, meanwhile, had nothing but high praise for Ms Sinema, whom he knows from their time on the Senate Banking Committee and work on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and he said he "admire(s) her independence."
His response to Donald Trump's opposition: Ahead of the vote, the former president blasted Mr Cornyn as a "RINO" and said the legislation "the first step in the movement to TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY."
But Mr Tillis pushed back on the accusation.
"I would say that for the vast majority of people who can walk in and purchase a gun and get a background check, it doesn't change anything", he said. "I would hope that he wouldn't be against the idea of an 18-year-old that walks into a gun store who now has a record that's one day old; it's not enough to determine if that person's a threat to themselves or to the society."
Why he took on Madison Cawthorn: Before the gun vote, Mr Tillis made national headlines when he threw his weight behind state Senator Chuck Edwards in his effort to take down wayward freshman Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina's 11th district.
"When I was speaker of the House, and since I've been up here, I've never asked for somebody to agree with me even 80 per cent of the time. We all have different views and different motivations. But I just felt like Mr Cawthorn was never willing to separate his own personal ambitions from the work ahead of us on any given day."
Read the whole interview here.
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