North Carolina Senate race in 'chaos' after Cunningham sexting scandal, Tillis coronavirus diagnosis
The race was upended by sexually explicit texts and a positive coronavirus diagnosis on Friday
By Megan Henney | Fox News
The critical and expensive Senate race in North Carolina, central to determining which party controls the upper chamber, was thrown into uncertainty this weekend.
Within the span of just a few hours on Friday, Republican incumbent Thom Tillis announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, while his Democratic challenger, Cal Cunningham, acknowledged and apologized for exchanging sexually suggestive text messages with a woman who is not his wife.
Tillis has “mild symptoms,†a spokesperson said Saturday, and the diagnosis forced the first-term senator to cancel in-person events with just one month until the election. He is one of several Republican officials to contract the virus in recent days, including President Trump and Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Mike Lee, R-Utah.
“It’s chaos – it’s really what I see it is,†David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, said Saturday.
Cunningham, who has led in polls throughout the summer and raked in a record-setting $28.3 million in donations over the past three months, apologized Friday for the romantic text messages that he sent. A spokeswoman for Cunningham’s campaign, Rachel Petri, confirmed on Saturday the authenticity of the text messages, which were first reported by the website NationalFile.com.
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