by Paul Dame
This morning yet another New England Democrat who had been described by others as a “Blue Dog” officially changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. Just across the Connecticut River, NH State Rep. Dale Girard, who serves both as a State Rep and Mayor of Claremont City, went to city hall to make official what had seemed to have been a reality for some time.
As Progressives have effectively taken over the party that once was dedicated to John F. Kennedy, many regular voters and state-level officials have realized that the national party, and some of the messaging and priorities of many state parties, have drifted further and further away from the kind of common sense policies they want to adopt to help the people in the places they represent.
While the Progressive shift seems to be strongest in the Northeast, Democrats from all over the country have been switching sides for various reasons. A few years ago several state legislators switched sides, and thousands of voters have identified with the #WalkAway movement organized by Brandon Straka. Just over two years ago at the VTGOP State Convention we hosted one such legislator from Georgia, Rep. Mesha Mainor, who had made the switch because Democrats were constantly attacking her for the work she was trying to do for her constituents and expand the choices they had for their students trapped in failing schools because of their zip code.
While there is one Democrat from New Jersey, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who made the switch at the national level—it seems far more people have made the switch based on what is happening at the state level in many cases. Despite the noise and pageantry of national politics, state-level politics tends to be surrounded with less hype and fewer personalities and centers more on the actual policy outcomes. And in that environment many voters and legislators are realizing that the results are perfectly clear; states with strong Republican representation are being run exceedingly well, while all of the states in the most financial trouble are solidly controlled by Democrats. Many taxpayers are consistently leaving states run by Democrats and moving to states run by Republicans.
With the third assassination attempt on President Trump over the weekend, it becomes just one more reason that outcome-minded people are disassociating from the political party of the far-left. When Democrats telegraph that their entire election game plan is to focus on the personality of the president, while Republicans are focused on the real difference the Working Class Tax Cuts made to people in middle America, it’s easy to see why people are making the switch. For many they have been Democrats for their whole lives. But a lot has changed—especially in the past few years—and voters who were financially conservative and socially liberal felt like the Republicans were a bigger liability during the culture wars of the 1990s. But thirty years later centrist voters have growing concerns about the national Democrats constantly shutting down government and preventing federal employees from getting their paychecks, while state Democrat parties keep looking for new ways to tax their residents—even while the population shrinks—to provide ever-expanding government services. At the same time the Democrat legislators asking for more money seem very uninterested or dismissive of the alarming reports of potential waste and fraud.
At the state level, pragmatic Republicans like Gov. Phil Scott and former Gov. Larry Hogan paved a way that many others have followed. They have disengaged with a broken system in Washington and worked to focus on what they can control in their state to make things better. In other places like Texas and Florida, where those governors are supported by Republican legislatures, they can accomplish more of the common sense reforms that help their state’s economy grow so that the tax burden keeps getting spread out thinner and thinner—instead of places like Massachusetts, and potentially Vermont, who are looking at ways to get more tax dollars out of a shrinking pool of potential taxpayers.
In Vermont the issues surrounding Act 181 have had numerous voters who identify as Democrats reach out and support Republicans who are fighting for common sense approaches to land use. Even last week at the Vermont Republican Party’s State Committee Meeting, we had a visitor who was a self-identified Democrat from Addison County who still considers themselves a Democrat. But they want to see Republicans pick up seats to restore some common sense in this state.
Over the coming weeks it will be up to Vermont Republicans to put forward our strongest group of candidates yet to give these kinds of voters—whether they think of themselves as “Blue Dog,” “Kennedy,” or “conservative” Democrats—the kind of middle-of-the-road approach that a long distant Democrat Party used to provide, but increasingly is only found from Republican representatives. If Republicans continue to focus on delivering on the affordability agenda while Democrats look for new taxes and to take away land rights voters may continue to move because Democrats seem to be particularly unresponsive to the voice of the people.
The author is an Essex Junction resident and chair of the Vermont Republican Party.