Candidates for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat presented their views Thursday morning on a number of topics, including the coronavirus crisis and President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

The candidates, incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and challenger Cal Cunningham, a Democrat, spoke in separate discussions during the Greater Wilmington Business Journal’s WIlmingtonBiz Conference & Expo keynote portion.

Tillis said the nation’s top priority right now is its continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early this year, Tillis (pictured below) had traveled to the Wilmington area and heard from business owners that they had one of the best years ever. Then COVID-19 struck in March.

“The eastern part of the state was one of the hardest to do that in the mountains because of the heavy reliance on travel and tourism,” Tillis said.

He said the economic response to the pandemic “is critically important as we also advance vaccine research, provide funding for school openings, extend unemployment through the end of the year and provide resources to the postal service, which had about a $9 billion shortfall in revenues because with COVID you just, weren't seeing the mailers. If the business is not open, you're not getting those mailers and other things that the post office generally delivers.” 

Of a second economic stimulus package, which has been stymied by disagreements between Republicans and Democrats, Tillis said, “I hope that we can get it done. And frankly, I hope we get it done the next week or so.”

Speaking to his view of the COVID-19 crisis, Cunningham (pictured below) said, “The struggles I'm hearing from folks across our state are really almost hard to believe, the way that we are having to come together to deal with this public health crisis, folks who have lost healthcare and with it, the peace of mind about how to see a doctor here in the midst of a pandemic, North Carolinians who were putting it all on the line to start small businesses or grow their small businesses, but with headwinds like we may not have ever seen in our lifetimes.

"We're being challenged as a country, and just as I stepped up after 9/11 and joined the Army Reserves and ran towards the fight that our nation was facing at that time, I'm asking North Carolinians to put me in this fight right now to take on the big challenges that are facing us.”

Of the potential Senate confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court pick after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September, Tillis said, “I met with Judge Barrett yesterday; I met with her over the weekend as well, and I think if people, anybody that really wants to know about Judge Barrett just go on the internet, search 'Judge Barrett, seventh circuit confirmation,' and watch her confirmation when she was actually put into federal court as a federal circuit court judge. She's a brilliant academic . . . first in her class at Notre Dame law, mother of seven, two adopted from Haiti, one with special needs.

"I met with her yesterday and she's a brilliant jurist. I believe that we should have a confirmation hearing and I'll leave it to the leader to determine the scheduling the actual confirmation on the Senate floor in terms of timing,” he said.

Cunningham said, “We need a thoughtful confirmation process and we need to do it after the election.” 

He said he believes Barrett should be vetted thoroughly.

“I think that nobody should get put on the Supreme Court without a thorough job interview,” Cunningham said.

To hear more of the issues Tillis and Cunningham covered in the keynote portion of the Expo, see below.