Continued thread
Political defectors: Tricia Cotham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricia_Cotham
* American politician (R-NC), lobbyist, former schoolteacher
* N.C. House of Representatives
* elected 2022 as Democrat
* campaigned on a trad. Democratic platform
* voted for abortion rights
* Apr 2023 defected to GOP
* supermajority to N.C. House Republicans
* cast deciding vote to restrict abortion
#USpol #ElectoralFraud #PoliticalCorruption
#TriciaCotham #PartyDefections #PartySwitching
#GOP #RepublicanParty #Trump2 #fascism
![Screenshot from Jessica Valenti's Abortion Every Day newsletter, linked above: You likely remember North Carolina Rep. Tricia Cotham. She’s the lawmaker who switched parties just three months after taking office, giving Republicans a supermajority and the votes they needed to ban abortion. There were lots of theories as to why Cotham became a Republican—the primary one being that she was offended that Democrats weren’t kissing her ass enough. But according to a report from The New York Times, the reason for her switch is actually far more nefarious: she was a Republican plant.
“[W]hat was unusual—and not publicly known at the time—was that the influential people who had privately encouraged Ms. Cotham to run were Republicans, not Democrats. One was Tim Moore, the redoubtable Republican speaker of the state House. Another was John Bell, the Republican majority leader.”
While there’s no saying for certain whether Republicans knew she was a weak link or if Cotham ran knowing she would switch parties, her behavior seems to indicate the latter. Democrats and other political allies tell the NYT, for example, that she ignored their messages and well-wishes; Cotham refused to meet or take phone calls from Planned Parenthood; and her top campaign donors were PACs that generally give almost exclusively to Republicans.
All of which is to say: she defrauded voters, and Republicans helped her.](https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/110/811/169/917/715/664/original/2b5a06c5b8ecf4a0.png "Screenshot from Jessica Valenti's Abortion Every Day newsletter, linked above: You likely remember North Carolina Rep. Tricia Cotham. She’s the lawmaker who switched parties just three months after taking office, giving Republicans a supermajority and the votes they needed to ban abortion. There were lots of theories as to why Cotham became a Republican—the primary one being that she was offended that Democrats weren’t kissing her ass enough. But according to a report from The New York Times, the reason for her switch is actually far more nefarious: she was a Republican plant.
“[W]hat was unusual—and not publicly known at the time—was that the influential people who had privately encouraged Ms. Cotham to run were Republicans, not Democrats. One was Tim Moore, the redoubtable Republican speaker of the state House. Another was John Bell, the Republican majority leader.”
While there’s no saying for certain whether Republicans knew she was a weak link or if Cotham ran knowing she would switch parties, her behavior seems to indicate the latter. Democrats and other political allies tell the NYT, for example, that she ignored their messages and well-wishes; Cotham refused to meet or take phone calls from Planned Parenthood; and her top campaign donors were PACs that generally give almost exclusively to Republicans.
All of which is to say: she defrauded voters, and Republicans helped her.")
