'We've got a good story to tell,' Tillis says of his re-election plans

Widely expected to seek re-election next year, Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis officially put his hat in the ring on Friday.

"We've got a good story to tell, and I think it's one that will get us re-elected," Tillis said in an interview with WRAL News.

A former Charlotte businessman and speaker of the state House, Tillis faces a primary challenge from retired Raleigh financier Garland Tucker. State Sen. Erica Smith, D-Northampton, and former Democratic lawmaker Cal Cunningham also are running for Tillis' seat.

Tillis has already been endorsed by President Donald Trump, but many Trump supporters aren't quite on board, as evidenced by the boos he received from the crowd at Trump's recent rally in Fayetteville.

"People in North Carolina know my record," he said, ticking off a list of accomplishments from both the General Assembly and during his first term on Capitol Hill, from cutting taxes and government regulations to providing more support for veterans.

"If I could wave a wand and do everything we did in North Carolina up in [Washington,] D.C., we'd be even better off" as a country, he said.

Tillis said he's worked hard for the military and veterans in the state, such as securing money for Camp Lejeune to repair damage from Hurricane Florence last year.

"We're working on putting more money into the [Department of Veterans Affairs] to make sure our hospitals and health care centers are as best equipped and modern as they can be," he said.

Robert Wilkie, a former Tillis aide, is now VA secretary.

Even though Tillis initially opposed a presidential emergency declaration, he defended Trump's decision to move money from various defense construction projects to help fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He said Congress is working to back-fill that spending so projects at Camp Lejeune and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base aren't delayed.

"We have a crisis at the border," he said. "We've got an open border where they're coming into this country and we're not capturing – we're not detaining – all of them. They're a threat to our national security, and the president is right to want to build that wall and secure our border."

He downplayed stories of children being separated from their parents and held in detention centers for weeks, saying instead that some immigrant children are "rented" repeatedly by adults pretending to have families in hopes that will improve their odds of staying in the U.S.

Tillis criticized Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke's call during a Thursday debate for mandatory nationwide buyback program to get assault weapons out of private hands. Although he didn't formally endorse so-called "red flag" laws that allow courts to temporarily take guns away from people deemed to be a threat to themselves or others, Tillis said some shootings could be prevented if more attention was paid to the mental health of people seeking to buy guns or their social media posts or public statements.