'Considered a traitor': NC Rep. Tricia Cotham leaves Democrats for GOP
North Carolina Rep. Tricia Cotham, who defected from the Democratic Party Tuesday to join the Republican Party, said Wednesday that she felt stifled by the party she was aligned with for years.
“The Democratic Party has become unrecognizable to me and to so many others throughout the state in this country,” she said at a press conference at the state GOP headquarters, where she announced that she had decided to change her party affiliation, joining the Republican Party. “...The [Democratic] party wants to villainize anyone who has free thought.”
Her extraordinary move gives Republicans more power to override gubernatorial vetoes in the state House — adding to the veto-proof supermajority Republicans already held in the state Senate — allowing the GOP to more easily push their agenda through the legislative process.
“If you don't do exactly what the Democrats want you to do,” she said, “they will try to bully you and will try to cast you aside.”
The state Democratic Party held a press conference after Cotham spoke Wednesday, responding to her claims. Anderson Clayton, the party chairwoman, dismissed Cotham's claims of bullying. Rep. Robert Reives, the top House Democrat, "has led this party with the most immense amount of integrity," Clayton said.
Clayton and other Democratic activists gathered at the party headquarters said Cotham should resign since 60% of the voters in her Mecklenburg County district voted for a Democrat — not a Republican — in 2022.
"It is a betrayal to the people of Mecklenburg County, with repercussions not only for the people of her district but the entire state of North Carolina," Clayton said. "Reproductive freedoms are on the line. Our public schools are on the line. LGBTQ rights are on the line. Voting rights are on the line."
'Considered a traitor'
Cotham won election to a deep-blue Charlotte-area seat as a Democrat just five months ago. She ran on a progressive platform, calling for the minimum wage to doubled, and for laws to protect LGBTQ rights and abortion access.
Now, Democrats say, Cotham might not just endanger North Carolina's status as one of few Southern states that still allows abortion. Also, they say, she has aligned herself with the party of HB2. The controversial law's sponsor, Dan Bishop, now a U.S. Congressman, spoke with Cotham at the NCGOP on Wednesday.
"We deserve better," said Cameron Pruitt, who leads a group of LGBTQ Democrats in Cotham's home of Mecklenburg County. "And if she can't vote with our values, she must resign."
On Wednesday, just hours after Cotham switched parties, Republicans introduced several new anti-transgender bills. They're aimed at issues like: banning transgender athletes from playing sports as the gender they identify as, banning doctors from certain treatments of transgender children, allowing doctors and hospitals to refuse treatments they morally oppose, and stopping cities from banning the sorts of anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy programs that other states have banned.
After the bills were filed, Cotham told WRAL News she had no comment.
Cotham said at Wednesday's press conference her views haven't changed, but that she felt bullied by Democrats and wanted to switch to a party that felt more welcoming.
The bullying stemmed from her decision, she said, not to vote the Democratic Party line on a few recent and controversial bills, particularly on guns and immigration.
"I was considered a traitor," she said.
She said some of her fellow women in the Democratic caucus bullied her and spread rumors — on Tuesday, House Speaker Tim Moore said the rumor they're dating is false — and she also pointed to a press release that Reives, sent out after she helped the GOP override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's veto of a bill to eliminate the state's pistol permit system.
Cotham and two other Democrats, Rep. Cecil Brockman and Rep. Michael Wray, missed that vote. Their absence allowed the gun changes to become law. Reives wrote that they should perhaps face the consequences in their next election, from voters concerned about gun violence.
Then when she was shopping back home recently, Cotham said, someone at the store recognized her and cussed her out.
Lincolnton Rep. Jason Saine, a top state Republican, said he has long considered Cotham a friend and noticed a significant change in her demeanor recently.
"I watched someone who's normally smiling, normally happy, have a little concern in her face," Saine said. "Something wasn't right. And I told her ... 'we'll always have your back.'"
What the change means
The big question now is what Republicans will be able to pass that previously would've failed due to a veto from Cooper that every Democratic stuck behind.
Abortion is the main issue, but far from the only one. Conservative activists have been pushing for further abortion restrictions now that Roe v. Wade is no longer law.
Cotham, however, has been outspoken about her pro-choice views, backed up by the fact that she had an abortion herself. That led Republican lawmakers to call her a "baby killer" to her face, and swerve their cars at her when she was walking near the legislature, she said in a 2015 interview with Time Magazine.
But standing in NCGOP headquarters Wednesday, flanked by numerous Republican state lawmakers and U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-Waxhaw), Cotham dropped her pro-choice language of the past.
In January she co-sponsored a Democratic-backed bill to codify Roe v. Wade into law, which would mean allowing abortions up until about 26 weeks. On Wednesday, she wouldn't answer a question of whether she'd now support cutting that in half and banning abortions after 13 weeks.
Neither Cotham nor House Speaker Tim Moore gave many specifics Wednesday on what laws Republicans will now be able to pass that they wouldn't have been able to without Cotham's support. However, she signaled support for school choice measures; Republicans have recently proposed changes that would transfer even more taxpayer dollars to private schools, and potentially even pay people to homeschool their kids.
The move further reduces Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s power to shape state law during his final year-plus in office. Cooper has spent the past four years able to veto controversial GOP-backed bills; Republicans lost their veto-proof majority in the 2018 “Blue Wave” elections. But the 2022 midterms went in the GOP’s favor, giving Republicans a supermajority in the Senate and leaving them just one seat short in the House — a seat Cotham now appears to be handing to the GOP.
“I'm no longer a Democrat,” she said, “but I remain a public servant.”
