Blacks joining the GOP

 NY Post:

The nation is experiencing a political “coming out of the closet” moment right now for a significant number of African-Americans who are not only supporting Republican candidates, but also running on the Republican ticket.

It’s a long-overdue reckoning of sorts for the Democrats as blacks reconsider — if not outright abandon — the party in favor of the GOP.

This shift has been evolving slowly and steadily.

In July 2023, for instance, Georgia State Representative, Mesha Mainor switched, a life-long Democrat in a deep blue Atlanta district, switched to the Republican Party making her the first-ever black woman to serve as a Republican in the Georgia General Assembly.

What would compel Mainor to make such a bold move?

As she noted this past July, “black children cannot read or perform simple math in marginalized communities. In my district, some of the stats show as little as 2% to 3% academic proficiency.”

In September 2023, the mayor of Dallas, TX, Eric Johnson also migrated to the Republican Party.

Johnson believes, “the future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism.”

Democrats are not leading this charge, and so a move to the other side made sense.

Mainor and Johnson made the switch for common-sense reasons such as school choice, law and order, and fiscal conservatism.

And they’re hardly alone.

Take Alabama. Back in 2021, Kenneth Paschal became the first black Republican in 140-years elected to the Alabama House of Legislature.

Paschal won the general election to fill House District 73, defeating Democratic candidate Sheridan Black with 75% of the vote.

Before Tim Scott of South Carolina was appointed Senator, he was elected as a congressman in the district that included Charleston in 2011.

This matters: Charleston was where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired in 1861.

Some 150 year’s later, Scott’s victory was notable in that he beat out other Republican primary candidates — all white men —within a predominantly white district to win the congressional seat.

When the new Congress convened in January 2023, it included more black Republicans serving together on Capitol Hill since 1877.

Although the actual numbers are small — just five GOP African-Americans — just three years before, there was only one black Republican serving in the U.S. Congress.
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 There is a general migration to red states from blue states.  The reasons appear to be economic.  Blacks are making that choice to flee poorly run cities and schools.