Democrats can count on losing Georgia in 2024 if they don’t get their act together soon, a recent high-profile defection suggests.
Rejecting the far-left drift of the increasingly radical Democratic Party, Democratic State Rep. Mesha Mainor announced Tuesday that she would switch parties, accusing the state Democratic party’s leaders of having “publicly slandered me in every way imaginable” and “relentlessly tried to sabotage every single thing that I have done” for her district. With her defection, Mainor becomes the only black Republican in Georgia’s state legislature.
“Today I stand here to say that I have decided to join the Republican Party of Georgia. I supported children and family over the teachers union. I supported the Republican position not to defund the police,” she said, explaining her decision.
Mainor had previously veered away from her party by supporting two Republican-backed initiatives in the state legislature: a school choice program and a bill to limit the ability of state counties to cut police funding.
In an interview with Fox News the same day she announced her defection, Mainor noted that “there are schools that only 3 percent of children are meeting proficiency. That’s not acceptable… The option that the Democrats are giving is keep them there until we fix it. We’ll get it better soon. But it’s been like that for 50 years. That’s not acceptable.”
In several tweets, Mainor also claimed that the Democratic Party had abandoned her by welcoming “left-wing radicalism” and “lawlessness” and prioritizing “illegal aliens” over “Americans.”
Last April, Mainor told Axios she would not abandon the Democratic Party regardless of policy differences, claiming that “I don’t think I vote with Republicans. I vote for what my constituency needs. No party has all the answers.” This pragmatic and common sense approach to serving her constituency stands in stark contrast to the rest of her party’s outlook.
Reactions to Mainor’s defection split predictably across party lines. Republicans immediately embraced Mainor, with many of them, like Georgia governor Brian Kemp and Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene indicating that they were excited to work alongside her.
“What it reflects is a reality about where there is a political home for diversity of opinion is welcomed,” said Georgia Republican state party chair Josh McKoon.
Georgia’s Democratic Party, on the other hand, characterized Mainor’s action as a “stinging betrayal,” stating that her district “deserves a representative who will do the job they were elected to do.”
Recent statistics on Georgia align with Mainor’s perception that the Democratic Party is out of step with the state’s people. A poll from Cygnal found that most Republican nominees in the 2024 general election would beat Biden by 10 points in Georgia. Another poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution estimated that more than 60 percent of the state’s voters disapprove of Joe Biden. Most pollsters agree that Trump is leading the rest of his Republican contenders in the state and is on track to defeat Biden, winning back a state he narrowly lost in 2020.
Democrats have been performing abysmally on local policy issues that concern the average Georgia voter. Atlanta is being subsidized by the federal government to take in more illegal migrants. Violent crime and homelessness have sky-rocketed throughout the state, with Atlanta being home to over one quarter of the state’s homeless population. The Biden Administration even bullied a Georgia school for removing books that featured inappropriate sexual content. (RELATED: Georgia Mayor Held at Gunpoint After Allegedly Breaking Into Home)
As they grow increasingly disgruntled with Biden, Georgians may also be remembering the good times they experienced when Trump was in office. While refusing to lock up violent criminals and drug dealers, Fulton County DA Fani Willis is expected to bring new charges against Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Republicans have an opportunity to capitalize on these developments to galvanize disenchanted voters tired of endless crime, poverty, and left-wing virtue signaling into action.
Georgia seems to be a perfect case study of how the Democratic Party’s radical progressive platform will alienate swing voters throughout the 2024 election cycle, a mistake that could cost them the White House.