Georgia Rep. Denounces Democrats and Joins the GOP
/The political landscape of Georgia was shaken by the announcement of Representative Mesha Mainor leaving the Democrat Party in favor of the GOP. On July 11, Mainor wrote on Twitter that she wasn’t making “a political decision,” since she represents a blue district in Atlanta. Her move is a “moral one.”
“I will NEVER apologize for being a black woman with a mind of my own.”
Mainor is serving her second term in Georgia’s state legislature, but she’s not likely to win another term as a Republican. Perhaps it would have been better for Mainor to serve her constituents as a moderate Democrat, but her former colleagues didn’t give her much of a choice. They were already recruiting candidates to run against Mainor for supporting school choice.
While advocating for bill SB 233, Mainor called out lobbyists and her Democratic colleagues. “You don’t have to treat me so badly because I am trying to help the children in my community.”
School choice refocuses dollars in education on the students rather than locking them into institutions. If you don’t want your child to be stuck in a failed public school and would rather see that money invested into a charter school, toward homeschooling, or a better public school, a parent has that option.
The criticism of school choice is that public schools will lose funding, but they’ll only lose funding if parents make a different choice. Mainor once asked, “Now, if you went to McDonalds every day and got a burnt hamburger and burnt fries, are you gonna keep going back to that McDonalds?” Mainor believes families deserve that choice, but some of her colleagues have argued parents are too uneducated and poor to make those decisions for their children.
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Rep. Lydia Glaize was “extremely concerned” about putting money into the hands of parents who can’t read and didn’t finish high school themselves. She said they were “not qualified to make those decisions,” and she feared what would happen if they can’t make up the financial difference of private school. But if these parents are the product of a failed school system, why trap their children in the same failed school system? Why does Glaize trust these uneducated parents to vote for her but not to send their children to a good school?
Mainor has also been disappointed with the push from the Democrats on defunding the police (which they have mostly backed off of, but even President Joe Biden voiced support of the defund movement on the 2020 campaign trail), and illegal immigration. Mainor claims her colleagues have also tried to sabotage her legislative efforts and constantly criticized her.
“When I opposed efforts to defund the police, many of my colleagues called me a sellout. I laughed at them. The only group I have EVER sold out to is my constituents who deserve to live in safe communities, not war-zones.”
Mainor has received praise from Republicans and right-wing media since making the switch, but Democrats from across the country have been calling Mainor a host of derogatory words, including sexual and racial slurs. She’s been sharing some of the hateful emails on social media, but she’s still glad to have made the switch. Mainor knows she won’t agree with every Republican policy, but she doesn’t expect to be attacked so viciously for having a diverse opinion.
“I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. 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.”
