Former California State Sen. Gloria Romero announced that she is ditching the Democratic Party, noting that it is “not the Democratic Party” she had “once championed.”
Romero, who previously served as the Senate Majority Leader in California, announced on Wednesday that she was “joining the growing number” of people who were leaving the Democratic Party and that she had changed her voter registration to the Republican Party.
“I am now another near, life-long Democrat who is joining the growing number of people, including key groups like Latinos, who are leaving the Democratic Party,” Romero said. “This is not the Democratic Party that I once championed. I do not recognize it anymore, and I cannot continue. I changed my voting registration today as the sun was rising, to Republican, which has, under Donald Trump, become the champion of working people.”
The following day, during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Romero blasted Harris’s record on education while she had served as the attorney general for California, and stated that Harris had done “nothing to change the schools.”
Romero noted that Harris had once tried to pass a bill “to jail mothers” of truant students.
“I have tried championing school choice, education freedom in California,” Romero explained. “Her record as attorney general showed that she did nothing to change the schools, to provide for school choice.”
Romero added that in Harris’s hometown of Oakland, currently 75 percent of African-American and Latino children are not able to do math or read at the “basic levels of proficiency.”
“Yet, she went to court with the teachers union — very powerful big donors — to block education reforms that these families had had the courage to go to court and sue over,” Romero continued. “That is the record of the attorney general of California.”
Romero’s exit from the Democratic Party comes after California State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil announced at the beginning of August that she was leaving the party and that she no longer “recognized” it.
“Blue California may be blue, but people are ready to vote for change, to make America great again, and I take pride in saying that today,” Romero added.
