African American Georgia state rep (Democratic stronghold of Atlanta) switches to GOP

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

A Georgia state representative has switched her political allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans, citing a change of heart and values.

Mesha Mainor was elected in 2020 to represent the citizens of House District 56 in the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, where she is originally from. She ran and won her primary by over 20 percentage points, successfully campaigning for issues including mental health, the environment and government accountability, according to her campaign website.

Her shift in partisanship is expected to provide more power to the current Republican majority in the Georgia House of Representatives.

Mainor later tweeted that she didn't leave the Democratic Party but that it was the other way around, due to Democrats' embrace of "left-wing radicalism, lawlessness, and putting the interests of illegal aliens over the interest of Americans."

Link to tweet

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democratic-state-representative-flips-to-gop-blindly-followed-a-vision/ar-AA1dJvzR

[Norbert]

1. I hope the 30 pieces of silver was worth it.

I hope she loses by 20 points in her next election.

[hlthe2b]

5. Impossible to think otherwise. IMO, there is a special kind of horrific to someone put in power

based on professed concern for people who are suffering, who then rapidly turn on them. Self-serving rationale or a brain tumor is the only explanation for me. But, since I believe it is likely the first, may the contempt of her constituents follow her for life--much like the NC turncoat who switched to ensure women would lose all rights to choice.

[Dave in VA]

40. It's always about the

MONEY!

&ab_channel=WarnerBros.Entertainment

[Emile]

2. What changed her heart and her values to not caring about her voters?

[roomtomove]

6. It is probably all about $$$$$$$$$$

[Conjuay]

3. Moral?

Resign. That would have been moral.

[FailureToCommunicate]

10. This!

^^^^^^^^

[czarjak]

4. They'll never stop hating you because you've A Black woman either.

[The Grand Illuminist]

7. As I said, the enemy is everywhere.

Especially in the minorities and LGBTQ+ comunities.

[AZLD4Candidate]

8. Enjoy losing your next election, traitor.

[ZonkerHarris]

48. the GOP will primary her and she will lose.

[sarcasmo]

9. Clayton Bigsby

[Norbert]

11. She tweeted is she was called out for not supporting 'defund the police'

Mesha, this was three years ago. Defund the Police is almost as dead as Scott Baio's acting career.

Tell me what is the REAL reason for the switch?

[OldBaldy1701E]

13. The real reason...

[Norbert]

14. Yep.

[LittleGirl]

17. Shouldn't that be 100s

Where are the Benjamins?

[OldBaldy1701E]

24. Yes, but that was the pic I had at the moment.

Jut imagine lots of them. LOL.

[LittleGirl]

41. ha ha

[2naSalit]

32. +1

For too many, that's what it's all about.

[Bettie]

19. That was my first thought too

Or she was never a Dem.

[2naSalit]

33. infiltrator.

[Skittles]

12. the DEMOCRAT party?

methinks this gal went to the dark side some time ago......

[phylny]

43. My first thought, too.

[allegorical oracle]

15. Nastiest double-cross politicians can pull -- the bait and switch.

How can your "morals" flip 180 degrees when what the political parties stand for has remained the same?
Caveat Emptor.

[bucolic_frolic]

16. It's the money. The rags to riches chase.

We could do a better job of bootstrapping.

[LittleGirl]

18. When are we going to stop this?

You can’t go from liberal to fascist in one day!

[ecstatic]

20. Moral? Running on false pretenses and misleading thousands of people is moral?

Last edited Wed Jul 12, 2023, 08:01 AM - Edit history (1)

Switching to a party that supports police brutality, taking away women's rights, taking away voting rights is moral? Does she need a dictionary? She needs to be recalled immediately.

Edited to add: I just noticed the additional "a" right before the word moral. Lol! Amoral, indeed. She might be self aware after all. Or her autocomplete is.

[3catwoman3]

37. Not only the extra 'a'. Her first name is spelled 2 different...

Last edited Wed Jul 12, 2023, 09:41 PM - Edit history (1)

…ways - Meisha and Mesha. Odd.

She needs a better proof reader.

[ecstatic]

49. Wow! I missed that too! lol

WTF??!! I guess it's just stuff one wouldn't expect and wouldn't look out for... like a user with his/her own name spelled wrong. Unbelievable! SMH

[jaxexpat]

21. Especially disconcerting is the fact that precious scarce resources were consumed placing her to....

this position where her reversal is most harmful. There should be no doubt this whole affair is the result of a financial agreement. The question should be, when did the deal mature enough to allow/merit public acknowledgement? Did someone's loan get paid off? Did somebody flash a roll of bills beneath her eyes? Who made and what are the promises?

This could be the result of some odd or cultish behavior in the local Democratic headquarters. What are the chances many of our "blue enclaves" are barely and vulnerably there at all and susceptible to similar reversals? I'm guessing many of them are not what we imagine them to be. I suspect they're more contemporary circumstance driven, or personality focused than the regular "yellow dog" enthusiasm which generally sustains the party. Without an engrained tradition which illuminates and fixes certain values, the fortunes of political parties at the local level are unpredictable.

[jaxexpat]

21. Especially disconcerting is the fact that precious scarce resources were consumed placing her to....

this position where her reversal is most harmful. There should be no doubt this whole affair is the result of a financial agreement. The question should be, when did the deal mature enough to allow/merit public acknowledgement? Did someone's loan get paid off? Did somebody flash a roll of bills beneath her eyes? Who made and what are the promises?

This could be the result of some odd or cultish behavior in the local Democratic headquarters. What are the chances many of our "blue enclaves" are barely and vulnerably there at all and susceptible to similar reversals? I'm guessing many of them are not what we imagine them to be. I suspect they're more contemporary circumstance driven, or personality focused than the regular "yellow dog" enthusiasm which generally sustains the party. Without an engrained tradition which illuminates and fixes certain values, the fortunes of political parties at the local level are unpredictable.

[BumRushDaShow]

23. She'll be two and done

Apparently this was as an escalation of her bucking the Democratic party position regarding private school vouchers, among some other things.

She is literally only in her 2nd term (and elected to replace a Rep. who decided not to run again in 2020 but who did try to run to fill the rest of John Lewis' term when he passed, but didn't make it through the special election).

Georgia Rep. Mainor switches to GOP after school voucher vote

Politics
By Mark Niesse and Greg Bluestein
18 hours ago

Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor switched political parties Tuesday, joining Republicans after saying she faced “harassment and intimidation” from Democrats since she broke with the party on votes for private school vouchers and prosecutor oversight. Mainor, who represents a Westside Atlanta district where over 89% of voters backed Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, said she changed parties because Democrats don’t reflect her core values.

She is the only Black Republican member of the Legislature and is believed to be the first Black woman to serve as a Republican in the Georgia General Assembly in state history. Her move gives Republicans a 102-78 majority in the House. “Members of the Democrat Party have publicly slandered me in every way imaginable,” Mainor said during a press conference at the Georgia Capitol. “If it’s not your values to support kids in schools where only 3% can read, I don’t have the same values.”

Democrats were unsparing in their criticism of Mainor, who was already likely to face a stiff primary opponent. State Rep. David Wilkerson, a Democrat from Powder Springs, said he’s baffled by the decision, knowing that Mainor represents a heavily Democratic district. She’ll be a top target for Democrats in next year’s election. ”I’ve watched politics for a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody switch when they’re in such a heavily Democratic area — and they’re running for reelection,” Wilkerson said.

State Sen. Josh McLaurin, a Sandy Springs Democrat who had previously posted a picture of a $1,000 check to anyone who challenged Mainor in next year’s Democratic primary, offered a blunter reaction. ”This was an inevitable result of her narcissism, and many of us saw it coming,” McLaurin said. “Good riddance.”

Link to tweet

(snip)

https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-rep-mesha-mainor-switches-to-republican-party-after-voucher-vote/SJ66GF7GRZFRLKIXQWOGZHL7PE/

TWEET TEXT

Josh McLaurin
@JoshforGeorgia
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Rep. Mesha Mainor
@MeshaMainor
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I support poorest children having a chance from lowest performing schools- a child with parent in jail or dead from overdose. I don’t believe a parent will uproot their home for $6500 scholarship to live in blight
1:10 PM · Apr 1, 2023

If anything, the state going from 79 (D)s to 78 (D)s with the GOP going from a 23 seat advantage to a 24 seat advantage, is not going to make much difference, although she is obviously no longer following the will of her constituents, and will be pretty much guaranteed to be out in 2024.

[ecstatic]

30. Disagreeing on school vouchers

does not in any universe justify switching to the gop party of bigots and insurrections.

Also, her other tweet goes all in with the qop buzzwords, so yeah, she was a lying troll the entire time.

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.

[BumRushDaShow]

38. Well I only mention that as *her* "pre-text"

If you look at when the final shit hit the fan and she made the decision to "leave", it was months ago, not suddenly "now".

And I also mentioned that this is only her 2nd term so she might have also been a 2020 "plant". She replaced a Rep. who had been an Atlanta politico for decades (both in the state House and on the Atlanta City Council), so in the chaos of that election, she managed to slip through, but it really has little impact on the domination of the GOP down there.

I have a bunch of cousins, who were born and raised northerners - predominately from here in the Philly area and 'burbs, who for some reason (am guessing because of the lower cost of living and a thriving black community there), chose to move down there to the city and surrounding suburban towns. One of them brought my aunt down there with her for caretaking. They have been keeping me up to date on the bizarre bubble-world of northern GA.

[ecstatic]

52. Thanks for the insight. Interesting. I'll have to look into her background

when time permits (which will probably be never, lol).

I was thinking about it a little later this morning and I wondered if maybe she entered politics as a low information / blank state person and didn't know where she really stood until later after winning office and learning on the job that she disagreed with basically everything on the Democratic platform. Maybe she got radicalized by right wing media when trying to find information to support her arguments. Either way, she's a narcissist who needs to resign. lol.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

42. That makes me wonder about narcissism

Perhaps, being in office as a Dem but a GOP at heart, she decided she wanted that "first Black woman" record. If she thinks her chances of re-election are low in either party, then she might want to go out with some note in the history books.

[BumRushDaShow]

44. You have a whole subset of brainwashed AAs

who tow the fiction of "But MLK 'was' a Republican" bullshit line and may have even grown up in households where the Boll Weevil Democratic party of the past terrorized them (before those Boll Weevils switched to the GOP with the "Southern Strategy" ). And that, has indelibly soured them to Democrats.

See Clarence Thomas.

[mcp37]

25. NOt the first time for Georgia

Doug McKillip did a similar switch back in 2010. That district (the one I live in) was a relatively safe as Democratic. It was subsequently cut to pieces thanks in no small part to McKillip. It is not just the vote in the General Assembly. It could mean massive changes for the political map in the future.

[Lonestarblue]

26. I suspect some money may have been involved, but I'm always suspicious of any switch from

being a Democrat to being a Republican. Was she simply always a Republican but ran in a Democratic district to get elected and become familiar to voters so she could then switch to Republican and maybe hold the district? No dirty trick is out of the realm of Republican politics.

[mnhtnbb]

27. Following the lead of a woman NC State Rep

who did the same thing last spring: switched from Democratic party to Republican after winning her race in a solidly Democratic district last fall.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/politics/north-carolina-republican-supermajority-democrat-switch-parties/index.html

Despicable people.

[PelicanScot_V3]

28. Odd to change your values to racism, bigotry, cruelty & greed. Good luck getting reelected.

[betsuni]

29. Assuming she had to be bribed to switch is an Everyone's Corrupt Both Sides thing.

[aocommunalpunch]

31. We'll see more of these, I think.

Makes the “vote blue, no matter who” a tougher sale. Thanks, assholes.

[Botany]

34. My name is Rep. Meisha Mainor and today I made the decision to leave the Democrat Party.

"the Democrat Party"

[dalton99a]

35. Georgia Democrats were scammed good

[tanyev]

36. A change of heart, values, and the balance in her bank accounts.

[CaptainTruth]

39. Major concussion? Stroke? It would take some kind of brain damage...

...for me to abandon my values & do something like that.

[Showbizkid]

45. A future of being the warm up act for Kyle Rittenhouse awaits

I guess Q-anon conferences pay.

[Javaman]

46. She pulled a sinema

Follow the money

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

50. interesting. Thanks for this

[area51]

53. "... left-wing radicalism, lawlessness, ...."

Oh, bullshit.