By Editor, July 12th, 2023.
A Georgia, US legislator who angered her Democrat colleagues in the Georgia State House of Representatives when she recently voted for a school choice bill has announced she is officially crossing over and switching parties.
Mesha Mainor – a Democrat who has represented District 56 in the Georgia House since January 2021 – announced the decision shortly before noon Tuesday that she will switch her party registration to Republican.
She becomes the only Black member of the GOP among Georgia’s 236 state lawmakers, and the first Black Republican woman to ever serve in the Georgia General Assembly. Mainor’s defection gives Republicans a 102-78 majority in the House.
“When I decided to stand up on behalf of disadvantaged children in support of school choice, my Democrat colleagues didn’t stand by me,” Mainor explained of her decision in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“They crucified me. When I decided to stand up in support of safe communities and refused to support efforts to defund the police, they didn’t back me. They abandoned me.”
“For far too long, the Democrat(ic) Party has gotten away with using and abusing the black community,” she added.
“For decades, the Democrat(ic) Party has received the support of more than 90% of the black community. And what do we have to show for it? I represent a solidly blue district in the city of Atlanta. This isn’t a political decision for me. It’s a moral one.”
The Daily Mail reports that at a Tuesday news conference outside the Georgia Capitol, she said they had ‘relentlessly tried to sabotage every single thing that I have done for District 56’ and ‘publicly slandered me in every way imaginable.’
‘I thought it was OK to not agree with those things as a Democrat. But they told me, You know what, those are values we just don´t have,´’ Mainor said, flanked by state Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon.
‘I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left ME when it embraced left-wing radicalism, lawlessness, and put the interests of illegal aliens over the interest of Americans. I have nothing to apologize for.’
But, the Daily Mail adds, she had long been on the outs as part of a minority faction of Atlanta-area Democrats and for deeply personal reasons revolving around a stalking incident involving a former campaign worker where Mainor felt her stalker got off too easy due to corruption in the prosecutor’s office.
Sources: Fox News, Daily Mail.
