Polities: Switch Hits
Norquist, Grover G.
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. in Illinois, seven in the New England states, and four in Pennsylvania. What Democrats bravely...
...Among independents, 166 became Democrats and 277 Republicans...
...A party-switcher must raise funds, ask for votes, and live his life in the new party...
...B ut what about elected Republican switches to the Democratic side...
...Thanks to a national party wedded to higher taxes, welfare, a weak defense, and gun control, "moderate" or "conservative" Southern and Western Democrats were swept away by conservative waves in 1980, 1984, and 1994...
...But the trend in party-switching is overwhelmingly in one direction...
...New York's Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress, became a Republican on June 25, 1998...
...During the Reagan-Bush years, Lee Atwater worked hard to attract Democrat switchers, but couldn't attract locally elected officials...
...Voters themselves are switching...
...The quality, quantity, and staying power of party-switchers are key indicators of the relative health of the two parties...
...But a real live elected sheriff who decides he would prefer to govern and stand for election as a Republican is making a very personal statement about what he thinks is happening in his community...
...A day before learning about it, Forbes's staff had held a 47th birthday party for him and he'd told them nothing...
...Why are so many more switching now...
...Dropped from the ticket, she became an embittered feminist and tried running for governor as a Democrat...
...in 1994, 14 did before November and 16 afterward...
...Jeff LaCourse, Forbes's executive assistant, calls his former boss "a megalomaniac...
...Phil Gramm was re-elected to his House seat after changing parties, and went on to win three Senate elections...
...Sen...
...Will Democrats risk much to see him re-elected...
...She used insanity as a defense...
...He is gambling with real chips: betting the rest of his career and life on the relative and shifting strengths of the two parties...
...Once the pride of the "diverse" Democratic Party, he was reelected overwhelmingly as a Republican in 1998...
...Then came 142 in 1995, 66 in 1996, 93 in 1997, 29 in 1998, and 45 as of September 15, 1999...
...Another Republican turned Democrat was Ruthann Aron, a locally elected official from Montgomery County, Maryland, who lost in a Republican Senate primary won by former Tennessee Sen...
...What's more, the national Republican leadership has worked to protect and reelect those Democrats brave enough to switch...
...What Democrats bravely hoped was a one-time readjustment after the GOP's big win in 1994 turned into a major trend that remains strong...
...The American Spectator • November 1999...
...Talking heads are forever making predictions about the next election, but they risk nothing and pay little if any penalty for error...
...Bill Brock...
...It's a good question, but not easy to get answered...
...Author of a muchnoted New Republic attack on the Clinton health care plan, McCaughey was elected New York lieutenant governor...
...As a top lieutenant for Bob Livingston, LaCourse explains, Forbes's fall after Livingston's sudden resignation from "important ally of the speaker" to "backbencher" was humiliating...
...Michael Forbes, elected as a Republican in 1994 from Long Island's first district, announced that after talking to Bill Clinton and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt he was changing parties...
...Mike Parker has been re-elected twice since switching and is now the Republican candidate for governor of Mississippi...
...Strom Thurmond once said that as many as 70 Southern Democrats were ready to join the GOP after Richard Nixon's election in 1968 if Nixon had delayed forced desegregation...
...Once in office, she accused fellow Republicans of conspiring against her and bugging her office...
...Forbes had already endorsed George W. Bush for president and had voted for school vouchers and against limits on so-called assault weapons...
...A study of Wake County, North Carolina, found that in 1995, 218 registered Republicans became Democrats and 962 Democrats reregistered as Republicans...
...As for the charge that the GOP is the party of "angry white males," Ben Nighthorse Campbell is the only Native American in Congress...
...A study of the 29 states with party-affiliated voter registration reveals that voters are registering Republican at a higher rate than registering Democrat...
...Republicans point to several factors...
...An even weirder New York defection was Betsy McCaughey's...
...Aaron then became a Democrat, but didn't receive much media attention until she was put on trial for hying to poison her husband and hiring a hit man to kill him...
...Democrats aren't exactly attracting the kind of high-caliber party-switchers who are flocking to the GOP...
...Like a losing tennis player who tells you he isn't really keeping score, the Democratic National Committee says it does not keep such a list...
...The press keeps saying that the Republicans have the same problems in the Northeast that Democrats do in the South and West as the two parties become more ideological rather than regional in their organizing principles...
...in Illinois, seven in the New England states, and four in Pennsylvania...
...Mike Foster was a Democratic state senator who switched and was rewarded with party support...
...First, growing GOP strength in the South makes it now safe for a sheriff to run as a Republican...
...Greg Laughlin, who after switching lost in a Republican primary to libertarian Republican Ron Paul, whose national direct-mail fundraising base proved stronger than the GOP leadership's efforts to protect Laughlin...
...Last July, Rep...
...Because successful defections encourage new defections, switchers are invariably targeted for defeat by their former party...
...With strong GOP backing, Campbell and Shelby won re-election by 27.5 and 26 point margins, respectively...
...Georgia state Senator Roy Allen switched in February 1994 to become the first black Republican state legislator in Georgia since Reconstruction...
...While Forbes made noises about the GOP's being too conservative for his Northeastern tastes, he promised to remain prolife and did not repudiate his vote seven months before to impeach Clinton...
...She lost in the primary...
...Louisiana's Republican Gov...
...In 1993,16 officials switched...
...Odder still was when she remained standing throughout Governor Pataki's State of the State address...
...One exception was Rep...
...Polling numbers and voters' willingness to identify with one party or the other change quickly...
...A scan of the headlines, however, reveals three Republican defections of note...
...Moreover, unlike the Democratic congressmen who switched and brought their staffs with them, every last one of Forbes's congressional staffers —both in Washington and the district—quit upon learning of the defection...
...The nation is moving towards the Republican Party and a more conservative center of gravity...
Vol. 32 • November 1999 • No. 11
