Republicans seeing the LIGHT!
Wave of Party Switchers Hits Republicans
By Hans Johnson
In These Times
Monday 18 September 2006
Citing extremism, more GOPers are joining the Democrats.
A trend of local, below-the-radar party-switches is undercutting
Republicans as they face the sternest challenge in a decade to one-party
control of Congress and several state legislatures. Such party-switching by
elected officials often indicates that the label they are shedding has lost
appeal and foreshadows poor performance at the polls.
Some recent switchers are exiting GOP ranks with a bang. Distorted
priorities, the federal deficit and the Iraq war are common themes in their
announcements. And in a direct swipe at the far-right ideology that has
become a governing credo in the Bush years, they cite intolerance in the
party as the chief reason for leaving.
“The moderate Republican has been pushed aside for the extreme right
wing,” Oklahoma state Senator Nancy Riley told the Associated Press in
August, when she became a Democrat. Riley represents a district in suburban
Tulsa and has served as minority whip in a chamber that her former party
was looking to take over in the fall election. She announced her defection
after years of what she described as “abhorrent” treatment by Republican
leaders who suffer a “lack of compassion for people.”
In central South Carolina, county prosecutor Barney Giese also
switched parties. The law-enforcement pro is the son of Warren Giese, a
longtime GOP state senator and revered football coach. His announcement
upset Republican leaders, struggling to maintain one-party control in a
state that Democrats added to their roster of early primary battlegrounds
for the 2008 nomination.
“My relationship with some of the leaders of the Republican Party is
damaged,” Giese told The State, a Columbia newspaper. “No one gets elected
without bipartisan support. … My conflict with them started with me being
independent.”
On the other coast, Rodney Tom, a state representative in Washington,
didn’t mince words when he left the GOP this spring. “I realized that the
far right has complete control of the party,” he told the Seattle Times in
announcing his switch.
Now running for state Senate as a Democrat, he represents a district
of suburbs that was once lopsidedly Republican. But Tom says voters there
generally back abortion rights, nondiscrimination for gay people, balanced
budgets and investment in state infrastructure, such as transportation
projects. That has soured them on today’s conservatives. “For me to be
effective for my constituents,” he added, “I need to be a Democrat.”
Tom’s switch underscores a shift in allegiances away from the GOP
among well-educated, upper-middle class voters based in part on the
strident antigay and antiabortion stands of Republicans.
Begun in the Clinton years, this erosion of the conservative base has
motivated some right-wing strategists to peddle the stances all the more
ferociously in hopes of finding and winning over new converts from other
demographic groups. It may pay short-term dividends. Bush strategist Karl
Rove claims to have identified and successfully solicited votes from as
many as 4 million new GOP voters in 2004.
Yet the stigma of pandering to intolerance can sear a negative
after-image into the minds of other voters. That effect and friction from
dealing with party leaders driven by rigid beliefs are two factors
consistently flagged by the party switchers. Showing up as much in red
states as in blue, the pattern cannot be dismissed as a regional fluke.
* In Idaho, Tony Edmondson, a former county commissioner, broke with
the GOP in August. He criticized state lawmakers, who in the spring placed
a ballot measure barring same-sex marriage before state voters in the fall.
“The legislature decided to focus on issues of ideology and posturing …
instead of focusing on the people’s business,” he told the Associated
Press. Edmondson is running for state senate as a Democrat.
* In New Jersey, former state Assemblyman Paul R. D’Amato left the
GOP, charging the party with operating a “closed shop that discourages
individuality, discussion and openness.” The Press of Atlantic City noted
that D’Amato joined two other local elected Republicans, James Carney and
Alisa Cooper, who have become Democrats in the past two years.
* And party-switchers figure in two marquee races this fall. Former
Kansas GOP chair Mark Parkinson has joined Democratic governor Kathleen
Sibelius as her choice for lieutenant governor on her re-election ticket.
In Virginia, longtime Republican and Reagan-era secretary of the Navy Jim
Webb is challenging incumbent U.S. senator George Allen, a voting-rights
foe sometimes pegged as an ‘08 White House hopeful, in his hard-fought
reelection bid. “National security policy under the Bush-Cheney
Administration is in total disarray,” Webb said in an August speech. “There
is no end in sight to the conflict in Iraq … and homeland security is
being neglected.”
The shift throws a wrench in the Republican machine as it rumbles
across a troubled political landscape. The results of special elections for
state legislature in the past year have showcased Democratic voting
strength, even in areas the GOP has long dominated (see “GOP Trashed in
Special Elections,” April 2006). Now another gauge indicates Republican
political power at risk.
Twelve years ago, GOP leaders trumpeted a host of Democratic
office-holders who had jumped ship as a grassroots rejection of Bill
Clinton and his party. They went on to post huge gains in the ‘94 mid-term
elections. Now, as Nov. 7 nears, a similar dynamic of popular disaffection
with Republicans is taking shape.
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Hans Johnson, a contributing editor of In These Times, is president of
Progressive Victory, based in Washington, D.C., and writes on labor,
religion and the mechanics of political campaigns.
Vote Democratic,
Jack Jeffers
Scott County Democrat Party