Senator Tillis’ new ad claims he’s looking out for the more than 1 million unemployed North Carolinians, but his record shows he’s consistently been too weak to stand up to the corporate special interests who fund his campaigns and too weak to fight for North Carolina families.

Senator Tillis slashed unemployment benefits as Speaker of the House, leaving North Carolinians with “bottom-of-the-barrel” benefits and “less money and for a shorter period of time than workers in nearly every other state.” His move was part of a “debt-reducing effort” to reduce businesses taxes, even as North Carolina’s unemployment almost reached 10%.

That’s not all. Then-Speaker Tillis gutted education funding while also slashing corporate taxes, creating “an education system where student achievement is lagging, teacher quality is dropping and many students are being left behind.” One prominent Republican at the time even said, “Yes, you can go back and say if we didn’t cut taxes we would have money for education.”

On top of that, Tillis eliminated the Earned Income Tax Credit and several other “exemptions and deductions that benefited working class taxpayers,” made sure a bill benefiting predatory payday lenders “sailed through the legislature” before fundraising with a lender, and blocked the state from expanding Medicaid.

“Senator Tillis can try all he wants to rehab his image and reinvent his record, but North Carolinians know he’s nothing more than a typical politician who is too weak to stand up to corporate special interests and for working families,” NCDP spokesperson Robert Howard said. “Senator Tillis is desperately running from his record gutting public education and slashing corporate taxes, cutting jobless benefits and tax provisions that help working families, all because he was caving to the corporate interests who fund his campaigns.”