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Features » September 18, 2006

Wave of Party Switchers Hits Republicans

Citing extremism, more GOPers are joining the Democrats

By Hans Johnson

Nancy Riley, Barney Giese and Rodney Tom (from left to right) have all switched parties for the upcoming election.

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.

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.

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  • Reader Comments

    Although welcome in the current political environment, these party-switchings make no sense.  Kind of like a family brawl - if you don’t agree, just move out.  The ultimate result will be a switch back as the Democratic party becomes intolerant and dictatorial.

    The answer is to change the Republican Party from within.  You office holders are the chosen ones to lead, not defect.  You are simply following Bush’s childish example that has been diasterous foreign policy.  Unite as reformers, get a representative party platform and challenge the bad guys you are defecting from.  Please.

    Posted by gussmith on Sep 18, 2006 at 1:43 PM

    I’m glad.

    This will raise the level of intelligence in both Parties.

    Now if we could just raise the level of intelligence among some of the authors herein.

    Posted by scorp on Sep 18, 2006 at 3:37 PM

    I think it will have little overall effect, if strengthening the Democratic Party is the agenda. The Republicans are still led primarily by their arch-conservative wing, and the Democrats get a few ex-adversaries who suddenly think they fit better within the party they had earlier opposed.

    The Reps still have a clearer stance as a party for voters to either accept or reject. The Dems are as ill-defined as ever. It’s hard to see how the Reps lose much of anything in this scenario.

    Posted by Kuya on Sep 18, 2006 at 7:40 PM

    So What.....it’s not like the Democrats are doing anything....they..(.meaning the Republicans that switched parties)...don’t want any shit on them when it hits the fan...Who would...?......Redhorse thinks it’s more politically motivated , than out of any sense of integrity..........damn...Civics 101 would make it quite apparent that the current “ War Lords” in the White House are fascists profiteers with no relative degree of proportion or morality....much less compassion or understanding........Why it took so long for these folks to come too that conclusion is anybodies guess....?

    gussmith...the only problems with that idea is....First , it sounds too much like common sense....Secondly , that would assume that these individuals would buck the trend and show courage...integrity....Third , ya gotta have a backbone primarily… before the courage and integrity can come into play....which, most politicians don’t appear to be in possession of....

    Posted by Redhorse on Sep 19, 2006 at 5:18 PM

    It would actually be a rare healthy development in partisan politics if dissenters in one party could make an easy switch to the “other” (as though there are only two). Or, ideally, “another”, if there’s ever a prayer that a yet-underestimated party successfully challenges the Biggies. I will be interested to see how the former Reps fare as the midterms take place and then pass. If their political futures fizzle, it will mean that publicly abandoning one’s party is generally a career-killer, as per the conventional wisdom. If they’re able to rally and are not too badly hurt by their choices, it may mean that the rigidity of party affiliation might not be as severe as it usually appears to be.

    I can’t say I’m too confident that they’ll emerge unscathed, but I admit that may be my own cynicism toward the Big Parties. Not that it’s unwarranted!

    Posted by Kuya on Sep 20, 2006 at 12:53 AM

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