Tricia Cotham Represents a New Low in American Politics

State Rep. Tricia Cotham (R-NC)

Party switchers are usually not hard to spot.  Politicians are creatures that value self-preservation, and so if they are leaving the party, usually one of three things are happening: their districts are becoming more competitive/out-of-reach, they have started to publicly fight with their leaders, or the leader of their party has become suddenly unpopular.  None of these was true State Rep. Tricia Cotham, who in April switched parties from the Democratic to the Republican side in the North Carolina State House.  Cotham was in a district she won by 20-points, and it was safely blue headed into 2024.  Cotham has publicly expressed support for much of the Democratic platform.  She was a firm believer in LGBTQ rights, had campaigned on a minimum wage hike, and was decidedly pro-choice.

She was also not new to the party-this was not someone who came out-of-nowhere George Santos style, and was suddenly found to have lied to get an office.  She was in the legislature for a decade (from 2007-2017), had run for Congress as a Democrat (losing to Alma Adams), and had roots beyond just her own achievements.  She campaigned for Bill Clinton and worked for John Edwards as a student.  Her ex-husband Jerry Meek was the Chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party from 2005-09.  Her mother Pat Cotham is a member of the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners, was a superdelegate for Bernie Sanders in 2016, and was elected to the DNC in 2010.  The family had deep roots in the Democratic Party-this would be the equivalent of someone like Mark Udall switching parties in Colorado.

But Cotham did switch parties in April, and thanks to an explosive exposé in the New York Times this past weekend, it appears this may have been planned as far back as her election announcement in 2022.  Cotham was encouraged to run by Republican legislative leaders Tim Moore & John Bell.  The article goes through the motions of talking about how she felt "alienated" from the party, but she just ran on most of these issues last year...how alienated can one get in three months?  She has proven to be a crucial problem for the North Carolina Democratic Party (and Gov. Roy Cooper) by ensuring that the GOP could loosen gun restrictions, support private school vouchers, & ban gender-affirming care for minors.  Most damning of all, Tricia Cotham, who once said on the State House floor that the abortion she had was between "she and God" helped to pass the most restrictive abortion law in North Carolina in her lifetime.

The New York Times is careful not to say the quiet part out loud here, and for legal reasons I'm going to admit that the upcoming is just a theory, but it's hard for me not to see this as a planned ruse.  The Republicans had no chance of winning a seat this blue.  Though Moore & Bell claim they did not know that she would leave the party, they still actively encouraged her to run, and she was backed in the race by conservative organizations like North Carolina Dental Society PAC and the North Carolina Health Care Facilities PAC, both of whom almost exclusively support Republicans.  Cotham is not a neophyte legislator, and she chose to run from retirement in 2022 in a district where her name recognition would give her a leg-up in the primaries, but in a race that no Republican could hold...this was the only way they could do so.  And her party switch would mean that the Republicans would be able to override any laws from Gov. Roy Cooper.  From my vantage point, it's hard not to think that this was planned (though the article nor the three legislators involved have claimed it wasn't, largely because Cotham would then be susceptible to fraud charges).

If this is the case, this would be basically unprecedented.  While both parties try to encourage or even run advertisements to get the other side to vote for weak candidates (think Todd Akin 2012 or John Gibbs in 2022), neither side has run an actual candidate in the other party's primary that they knew would switch sides.  Republicans did come close to trying to trick liberal voters in 2020 while running pro-marijuana candidates with GOP links in third party primaries that ultimately cost the Minnesota DFL the State Senate, but again...something like what appears to have happened with Cotham has never happened before...but given how well it worked out for the party in charge, it's hard not to think that both sides will cross this boundary now that it's worked so well.

And the worst part is...so far, there's nothing they can really do about it.  Cotham is in office the remainder of her term, costing the Democrats any defense they could have in the next two years.  And she wasn't someone whom we should've seen coming-her Democratic roots and long public service career in connection with progressive politics means that this isn't a "you should've caught this" moment  for Democrats.  This is really dark, terrible stuff, with people now (allegedly) lying to voters to win an office they otherwise couldn't, and screwing over thousands of people (and in this case, millions of North Carolinians) who trusted them.  All politicians "lie" but they don't lie like this-in a world where nothing shocks me about politics, Tricia Cotham has.  I hope her soul was worth it.