Only four months after winning re-election as a longtime Democrat, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced that he was defecting to the Republican party. Before assuming office, Johnson served nearly a decade in the Texas Legislature as a Democrat — making his decision to switch parties all the more shocking.
On Friday, Johnson announced his decision in an 0p-ed in the Wall Street Journal. “Today I am changing my party affiliation,” wrote Johnson. “Next spring, I will be voting in the Republican primary. When my career in elected office ends in 2027 on the inauguration of my successor as mayor, I will leave office as a Republican.”
In his op-ed, Johnson says that he won 98.7% of the vote in his re-election. Although it’s worth noting that was when he was running as a registered Democrat in a county that President Joe Biden overwhelmingly carried. The mayoral position is technically non-partisan, but it’s hard to argue that running as a registered Democrat in a deep-blue county didn’t have some impact on the vote.
Johnson criticized Democratic leadership, arguing that Democratic mayors (of which he was one until a few hours ago) have allowed cities to crumble into “disarray” and lawlessness. Johnson also pats himself on the back for standing up against the defund the police movement.
Johnson paints a picture of Democratic Mayors that is wholly incongruent with the state of play in blue cities. New York City’s Democratic Mayor, Eric Adams, is literally a former cop. And D.C.’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser has fought tooth and nail to prevent criminal justice reforms from going into effect.
He isn’t the only southern Democrat to defect to the Republican party in a dramatic fashion. In July, Georgia State Representative Mesha Mainor announced that she was switching to the Republican. Mainor, who served in a deep-blue Atlanta district, defended her decision by arguing that she was pushed out of the Democratic party. Mainor was criticized by Georgia Democrats but welcomed with open arms by folks like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who applauded her decision to move parties.
As for Johnson, there will surely be a ton of backlash, but maybe, like Mainor, he’ll make some friends in his new party.
All of those people are/were super conservative. Being anti-Trump doesn’t make you a dem
Democrats are the big tent party. The more the republicans shift to the far right, the more the tent expands to pick up the ones that stayed behind.
The far right movement will only shift the Democratic Party to the right to pick up the stragglers, not make it any more left.
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And in other countries, random coalitions combine to form a coalition govt. in the USA, random coalitions combine to form a party. It doesn’t mean progressives won’t continue to gain ground as they have been.
But let’s be clear, Cheney, Flake, and most of the others mentioned are on the right flank of the GOP. Their only redeeming quality is being anti-Trump because they don’t want their party to be unpopular.
Democrats are only interested in picking up Republicans, while they punch left. It’s like they are fighting to become the dominant conservative party