State Democrats shift allegiance after Election Day debacle

ATLANTA – Staggering Election Day losses are not the Democratic Party’s final indignity this year.

At least 13 state lawmakers in five states have defected to Republican ranks since the Nov. 2 election, adding to already huge GOP gains in state legislatures. And that number could grow as next year’s legislative sessions draw near.

The defections underscore dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party – particularly in the South – and will give Republicans a stronger hand in everything from pushing a conservative fiscal and social agenda to redrawing political maps.

In Alabama, four Democrats announced last week they were joining the GOP, giving Republicans a supermajority in the House that allows them to pass legislation without any support from the other party. The party switch of a Democratic lawmaker from New Orleans handed control of Louisiana’s House to Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.

In Georgia, six rural Democratic state legislators – five from the House and one in the Senate – have switched allegiance to the GOP since Nov. 2. In Maine, a House Democrat flipped; in South Dakota, a Democratic state senator.

Most of the party swaps are in the South, where GOP rule is becoming more entrenched and Democrats – many of them already more conservative than their counterparts elsewhere – are facing what looks like a long exile in the minority.

In most cases, those who’ve jumped ship said the Democratic Party abandoned them – not the other way around.

“The Maine Democratic agenda is too focused on the bidding of various special interests,” said state Rep. Michael Willette, as he joined the GOP less than two weeks after being elected as a Democrat.

The GOP picked up a whopping 690 seats Nov. 2 – the largest shift since 1966, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Republicans now control both chambers of the state Legislature as well as the governorship in 21 states.

The shifts come as legislatures are set to begin the politically charged, once-a-decade process of redrawing congressional and legislative districts to reflect updated U.S. Census population estimates.