Artur Davis switches from Democratic to Republican party
It’s official: Former Democratic Alabama House member and gubernatorial candidate Artur Davis is becoming a Republican and laying the groundwork for a potential political future in Virginia.
“If I were to run, it would be as a Republican,” he wrote on his Web site. “And I am in the process of changing my voter registration from Alabama to Virginia, a development which likely does represent a closing of one chapter and perhaps the opening of another.”
Davis added that he has been approached about running for a House seat in Northern Virginia in 2014 or 2016 or the Virginia state legislature in 2015. As The Fix reported earlier this month, he could run against Rep. Gerry Connolly (D).
“I welcome this development,” Connolly said of the possibility on MSNBC last Friday. “The fact that they feel they need to recruit a former Democrat from Alabama who does not yet live in our district is a very welcome development, and I look forward to debating him.”
Since losing the 2010 gubernatorial primary in Alabama by a wide margin, the moderate Davis has become a critic of his own party and broken with Democrats on a number of high-profile issues, including voter ID laws.
The Republican Party, Davis said in his statement, “is fighting the drift in this country in a way that comes closest to my way of thinking: wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities.” The Alabama Democratic Party in particular, he says, “has weakened and lost faith with more and more Alabamians every year.”
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