Repost - Why are so many Democrats changing parties and becoming Republicans?

In the last few weeks three prominent Democrats, two in LA and one in North Carolina have switched to the Republican party.  In North Carolina this gave the GOP a Super Majority!  This is after Jeff Van Drew switched from Democrat (majority party) to Republican (minority party) in 2019.  The Dem to GOP switchers come from 21 different states.

Read the entire Vox story here.

Three state lawmakers have now switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the last month. It’s part of a decades-long trend that’s helped the GOP consolidate power in certain states, handing them majorities, and even supermajorities.

On Monday, Louisiana Rep. Jeremy LaCombe became the second Democrat in the state house to defect, just weeks after Rep. Francis Thompson announced his decision to leave the party. Thompson’s decision gave Republicans a supermajority in the state house; North Carolina state Rep. Tricia Cotham also gave Republicans a supermajority in that state’s house when she announced her decision to switch parties earlier this month. Republicans in both states now have the power to override their Democratic governors’ vetos as a result.

The trend isn’t limited to state government. US Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona left the Democratic Party late last year and plans to run as an independent in 2024. And in 2019, US Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey notably broke Democratic ranks to vote against impeaching former President Donald Trump and declared that he would be switching parties. But it is more common at the state level, and the recent changes give rise to the question: Why are there suddenly so many party switchers at once?

Each of the state lawmakers have their individual reasons. Cotham said that she was bullied by her Democratic colleagues and that the Republican Party is a better fit for her values, even though she’s previously sided with Democrats on many of the most divisive issues, including abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. Thompson said that he’s felt pushed out of the Democratic Party because its stance on certain issues is incompatible with his religious views. LaCombe did not offer up his own reasoning.

But there are also some common threads among the three cases that might help explain their decisions. 

Party switching isn’t a new phenomenon. A total of 169 state legislators have switched parties since 1994, according to Ballotpedia. The changes have largely benefited the Republican Party, with 80 Democrats joining the GOP and only 23 Republicans becoming Democrats in the last 30 years. Those Republican pickups were mostly in states that were once more purple — such as Mississippi and Louisiana — that have since taken hard right turns, and where the GOP has entrenched their power through gerrymandering.

Read the rest of the story here.