With his private-sector credentials and only a passing interest in politics - ask him about that Asheville City Council run in 1995 - Tim was recruited to run for the State House in 2008 by Rep. Skip Stam. But the Republican Minority Leader had one condition: Tim had to get a haircut (it wasn't a good year for mullets).
Although he narrowly lost that race (it wasn't a good year for Republicans), he was asked to run again in 2010 by Thom Tillis, who now represents North Carolina in the U.S. Senate. And this time not only did Tim win, Republicans made history by assembling their first majority in Raleigh in more than a century.
They immediately got to work reforming state government, and Tim was right at the center of it all. He quickly distinguished himself as a leader in the areas of government oversight, private property rights, regulatory reform, and tax policy. He chaired three different committees and served as a member of countless others. During his first year in office, Tim was single-handedly responsible for the comprehensive reform of North Carolina's draconian annexation laws. Civitas went on to rank him as the most conservative member of the N.C. House.
In his second term, Tim was a chief architect of the legislature's historic Tax Reform law, which has spurred North Carolina's economy over the last decade and consistently produced record budget surpluses. As the founding Chairman of the House Regulatory Reform Committee, he eliminated thousands of costly and meddlesome regulations on our state's small businesses. Tim was the primary sponsor of 118 bills during the 2013-2014 biennium, 45 of which became state law, and all with bipartisan support. For these and his many other efforts, he was ranked as the #1 Most Effective Legislator in North Carolina by the Raleigh News & Observer's Insider State Government News Service.
After a tough re-election loss in 2014, Tim agreed to serve out the remaining year of the unexpired term of a county commissioner who had resigned. With public service behind him (or so he thought), Tim moved back to Henderson County in 2018 and set his sights on refurbishing an old lodge up on Bearwallow Mountain.
Then, in May of 2019, Henderson County's Chuck McGrady announced his retirement from the State House. By August, Tim decided we would run in 2020 to succeed his friend and former colleague - a man he holds in the highest esteem. "I've admired how Chuck worked across the aisle to forge relationships which have benefited not only the people of Henderson County, but also the entire state," Tim said at the time. "Chuck is a model public servant. I'll do my best to honor that legacy."
After handily winning that race, Tim returned to the legislature and hit the ground running. Not only did he succeed McGrady in representing District 117, he took the reins of the House Committee on Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), a powerful committee that McGrady himself had chaired for many years. Building on McGrady's foundation of modernizing North Carolina's prohibition-era alcohol laws, Tim has successfully guided ABC policy during a challenging time for the hospitality industry. For this many other efforts, this year the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation named him the most pro-business member of the State House.
Moffitt announced on December 3, 2021 that he would run for the newly-drawn State Senate District 48. The seat is being vacated by Republican Chuck Edwards, who is running for Congress.
"I am enormously proud to be part of the conservative majority in Raleigh that has delivered so much for the people of our state," Moffitt said in his official announcement. "It has been the honor of my life serving in the House - and if the good folks of Henderson, Polk, and Rutherford send me to the State Senate, I will build upon that record of success."
How does he intend to do that?
"Like I always have," he told us. "By considering everyone's point of view and then working together to come up with simple solutions to complex problems. Too often, government makes the solutions too complex. They don't need to be."