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A Georgia Democrat who infuriated members of her party after she supported a GOP-led school choice bill recently has announced she is switching to the Republican Party after taking heaps of abuse.
“Mesha Mainor – a Democrat who has represented District 56 in the Georgia state House since January 2021 – will announce shortly before noon Tuesday that she will switch her party registration to Republican,” Fox News reported exclusively.
She told the network: “When I decided to stand up on behalf of disadvantaged children in support of school choice, my Democrat colleagues didn’t stand by me. They crucified me. When I decided to stand up in support of safe communities and refused to support efforts to defund the police, they didn’t back me. They abandoned me.”
“For far too long, the Democrat Party has gotten away with using and abusing the black community,” she noted further. “For decades, the Democrat Party has received the support of more than 90 percent of the black community. And what do we have to show for it? I represent a solidly blue district in the city of Atlanta. This isn’t a political decision for me. It’s a moral one.”
Mainor also made it clear that she’ll continue to work across party lines after she makes the switch to the GOP, saying she has “never hesitated to work across the aisle to deliver results for my community and the people I was elected to represent. And that won’t change.”
Mainor added that she’s “been met with much encouragement” regarding her decision to switch parties and said she feels it’s “humbling to be embraced – for the first time in a long time – by individuals who don’t find fault in a black woman having a mind of her own and be willing to buck the party line.”
Asked if she believes she will get pushback from Democrats, she responded: “The most dangerous thing to the Democrat Party is a black person with a mind of their own. So, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
She explained that her priorities after switching parties would be to continue focusing on education as well as expanding the GOP majority in the state legislature.
“Education and the importance of school choice has been – and will continue to be – a key focus of mine,” she told Fox News. “But outside of education, I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Georgia General Assembly to tackle the most pressing issues facing our state and to help grow the Republican Party, helping us not focus not just on preaching to the choir but growing the congregation.”
In May, she posted a video to social media in which she criticized Democrats for turning against her after she began advocating for school choice expansion.
“I support school choice, parent rights and opportunities for children to thrive, especially those that are marginalized and tend to fail in school,” she said then. “The Democrats at the [Georgia State] Capitol took a hard position and demanded every Democrat vote against children and for the teachers union. I voted yes for parents and yes for children not failing schools.”
She justified her decision by noting that in some schools within her district, reading proficiency is a paltry 3 percent, and many students can’t even solve basic math problems.
“I have a few colleagues upset with me to the point where they are giving away $1,000 checks to anyone that will run against me,” Mainor continued. “I’m not apologizing because my colleagues don’t like how I vote.”
She also said at the time that parents are growing increasingly upset at Democrats who “put the teachers union and donors ahead of their constituents.”
“It’s ironic. I’ll say every election year, I hear ‘Black Lives Matter.’ But do they? I see every other minority being prioritized except black children living in poverty that can’t read,” Mainor argued then.
