Global Courant 2023-04-18 06:46:43
The Democrats were dealt another blow Monday after one of its own members, West Virginia Del. Elliott Pritt, denounced it and joined the Republicans, becoming the last legislator to do so in recent weeks.
Pritt, a teacher, is in his first term after defeating an incumbent Republican in the 2022 election.
Preparations for the inauguration of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice at the West Va., statehouse, largely abandoned for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration Sunday. Biden will be inaugurated on Wednesday. The FBI warned of potentially violent protests in all 50 U.S. capitals. Jim Justice was recently quoted as saying he is not a politician. (Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“I would like to welcome Representative Elliott Pritt to the Republican Party,” West Virginia Republican Party Chairman Elgine McArdle said in a statement. “Like many residents of West Virginia, Representative Pritt has recognized that today’s Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party our parents grew up with.”
An official government portrait of West Virginia Republican lawmaker Elliott Pritt. (wvlegislature.gov)
The move gives the GOP 89 members in the House, while Democrats’ ranks fell to 11. Pritt’s decision was already accounted for on the official House list of the West Virginia Legislature late this morning.
Pritt was the last Democrat in the House in the state’s southern basins.
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The 34-state Senate also has a GOP supermajority with 31 Republicans and three Democrats.
The move continues a Republican wave in the state that began a decade ago. After the 2014 election, the GOP seized control of the state senate and house from the Democrats for the first time in more than eight decades.
Buoyed by criticism of former two-year President Barack Obama’s energy policies in coal-rich West Virginia, registered Democrats fell below 50% in 2014 for the first time since 1932. There are now about 456,000 registered Republicans, or 39.6% of all registered voters in West Virginia, according to the office of the Secretary of State. That compares to about 372,000 registered Democrats, or 32.3%.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin is the only Democrat currently holding office statewide.
Republican Louisiana State Representative Jeremy LaCombe, a former Democrat. (Office of Rep. Jeremy LaCombe)
Last week, Louisiana Representative Jeremy LaCombe announced that he had left the Democratic Party and would register as a Republican.
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Earlier this month, North Carolina State Representative Tricia Cotham gave Republicans a supermajority in the state House with her move. And in March, another Louisiana state representative, Francis Thompson, also gave Republicans a supermajority in the state House after switching party affiliations.
Bradford Betz is a Fox News Digital breaking reporter covering crime, political issues and much more.
