Following Tulsi Gabbard, Tricia Cotham tells the corrupt Demonrats to stick it!

newsobserver.com

Democratic State Rep. Tricia Cotham joined House and Senate GOP leaders at the North Carolina GOP headquarters Wednesday morning to announce that she is switching parties to become a member of the House Republican caucus.

News of Cotham’s decision provoked divergent reactions from each party, with Republicans celebrating the move and Democrats calling for her resignation and accusing her of betraying her constituents.

Several GOP leaders and high-ranking lawmakers attended Wednesday’s press conference to welcome Cotham to the party. House Speaker Tim Moore, who has worked with Cotham in the House since she was first appointed to fill a vacant seat in 2007, said he was “very proud” to join his “newest Republican colleague.” “Even when I was in the minority, and Rep. Cotham was in the majority, she was always one of the most bipartisan members who would work with us a great deal,” Moore said.

Moore said that in conversations with Cotham over the last few weeks he got a sense she was unhappy and felt that she had to vote against her conscience more than once. Moore and other GOP leaders repeatedly stressed that they thought Cotham’s decision to switch parties showed that the Democratic Party had become intolerant of dissenting views and members who voted with the GOP.

Cotham said there were many reasons for her decision to switch parties, and that she didn’t make the decision overnight, but that it was something she thought about over several months, particularly after the legislature returned for its long session in January.

What she perceived as increasing hostility from her colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus alarmed her, Cotham said. And on social media she encountered “vicious” attacks over her votes and stances this session. Cotham, along with a handful of other more moderate House Democrats, has voted with Republicans on multiple bills this year.

“As long as I have been a Democrat, the Democrats have tried to be a big tent. But this now, where we are, the modern-day Democratic Party has become unrecognizable to me, and to so many others throughout the state and the country,” Cotham said. “The party wants to villainize who has free thought, free judgment, has solutions, who wants to get to work to better our state, not just sit in a meeting and have a workshop after a workshop.”

Cotham’s party switch will have major ramifications for state politics. Republicans now have a supermajority in both chambers, which will make it next to impossible for Democrats to uphold Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes going forward. House Republicans now control 72 of the chamber’s 120 seats — the exact number needed to override vetoes when all members are voting. Republicans came out of November’s election winning an outright supermajority in the Senate, but fell one seat short in the House, which is what makes Cotham’s decision so consequential.