| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Jesse Naranjo and Charlie Mahtesian
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POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP | What up, Recast fam! Florida education officials approve new provisions for teaching Black history, which note how slaves gained skills for “their personal benefit.” Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before Congress about censorship on social media platforms. And the NFL owners approve the sale of the Washington Commanders. First, though, we focus on a historic party switch in Georgia. Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor is one of the newest members of the GOP. It’s a trailblazing feat making her the first Black Republican woman to ever serve in the state’s Legislature. In the 10 days since she abandoned her party affiliation with the Democrats, she says that her blood pressure has dropped to levels not seen since her college days at Howard University in the 1990s. She also has taken to social media to shed light on the vile, hateful and racist messages she’s received since switching parties, including several that refer to her as the N-word. She maintains those messages aren’t coming from her constituents, who she says still support her. Mainor was first elected in 2020 to deep-blue Fulton County. It’s such a Democratic stronghold that she ran unopposed in the last two general election cycles.
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Next year won’t be so easy. Even before her party switch, Democrats were already making moves to wrest the seat away from her. Prior to her departure, Democratic state Sen. Josh McLaurin in April posted an image of a check for $1,000 for anyone to step up and primary Mainor, tweeting: “All I need is a name.”
This was just part of the “harassment and intimidation” from Democrats she cited during her announcement news conference last week. She broke with her old party on issues including a vote for a GOP-backed bill on vouchers for private schools, a measure that Democrats argued stripped public schools of critical funding and funneled it to private entities that had no taxpayer accountability. The bill failed, but will likely be reintroduced when the new legislative session starts in January. Mainor supported another GOP-led measure that did become law this month, creating an eight-member Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission. That board has the authority to discipline and remove prosecutors it deems as not being tough enough on crime. “For the families that are victimized twice- 1) losing a loved one to a crime 2) no justice from a prosecutor that chooses self interests over the communities they represent,” Mainor tweeted Tuesday, voicing support for the commission. We chop it up about why she ultimately decided to call it quits with the Democratic Party. She also notes Fair Fight Action, a group started by Stacey Abrams, backed her primary opponent in a failed attempt to oust her in 2022. Mainor also dishes on her talks with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and why she expects to be reelected in 2024. ◆◆◆ This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE RECAST: It's been quite a whirlwind for you for the last couple of days since you announced your party switch. So I want to start with the positives. What’s the best thing that's happened to you since your announcement? MAINOR: So the very next day, I went and had my annual physical and my blood pressure was 115/67. It has not been that low since college. And so switching over to the Republican Party made me have better cardiac health [chuckles]. THE RECAST: Your arrival to the Republican Party was heralded by a number of prominent Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp. Was that strange to have him come out so so quickly? Had any Republicans courted you before your move? MAINOR: I've been at the state House for three years. And in those three years I worked nothing but alongside the Republicans, which is why I chose to switch, because it was Republicans that were helping with every initiative that my community brought to me. It was Democrats that were against every initiative that I brought to the Capitol.
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Courtesy of Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor | Gov. Kemp has signed two of my bills. I've built a relationship with Gov. Kemp. He knew that I was going to be switching parties ahead of time, so it wasn't necessarily a shock to him. I notified people about a week before that I would be switching parties. THE RECAST: What does the GOP offer you that remaining in the Democratic Party did not? MAINOR: Support. I'll start with this past session. The Atlanta University Center, which includes Morehouse, Spelman, Clark Atlanta, Morris Brown, Interdenominational Theological Center — those presidents came to the Capitol and said: “Look, we’ve got a crime issue on our campuses.” The issue being at one point, the campuses were receiving bomb threats. Before my bill was passed, campus police on one campus could not cross boundaries to another campus. So you could see a crime across Spelman’s campus, but a Morehouse police officer could not handle the emergency. So the bill I proposed last year and got passed says that campus police can cross boundaries. It makes campuses safe. They save money because it's more efficient. Democrats tried to pull that bill off of the floor. Democrats voted no against the bill. That makes no sense.
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Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor poses with Gov. Brian Kemp and supporters at the campus police bill signing. | Courtesy of Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor | THE RECAST: So it wasn't just the support of the school voucher bill — where you were the only Democrat to vote for the measure that ended up failing. This friction with members of your party seems to have been building up for some time. MAINOR: It definitely was brewing. I've been frustrated with the priorities that the Democrats have been setting forth. The school voucher bill goes forward. I have a colleague that puts up a check on social media for $1,000 and essentially says, “I don't care who you are, anybody is better than Mesha Mainor. Yes, she has a master's degree from Howard University and is quite qualified and has been doing excellent work for her community. I don't care who you are. You know, you can have a GED, I want you to replace her.” In 2022, with me being an incumbent, Stacey Abrams and her team endorsed opponent [Keona Jones] in the primary. I won more than 65 percent of the vote. I say that to say that the community is voting for me. I will continue to show my constituents I am authentic, telling people the truth, and showing that I am not afraid to lose my seat for the sake of telling them the truth. THE RECAST: You've also taken to social media in recent days to showcase some of the negative responses you received since switching parties. Do you believe your constituents should be upset about you switching parties? After all, they voted for a Democrat. |  | MAINOR: So the people posting on social media, those are not my constituents. My constituents, we have a relationship. They're saying to me: “I still support you.” They're texting and emailing me to say, “I still support you.” At the end of the day, people don't care about party. They care about what impacts them on a daily basis. I don't represent a party. I represent some policies that impact my community. One example is trains blocking Black communities for hours at a time, sometimes days at a time. That's an issue that I brought forward that has been happening for 50 years. I'm the first person that has brought this matter to the community, saying, “Hey, this is not right. These trains are blocking your community. This is the thruway that connects communities to communities.” My constituents are saying, “We don't care what letter is next to your name, we're gonna keep supporting you.” They may not be able to vote for me in the primary. But when they see my name in the general, I think people are going to be surprised when they see the first Republican elected in metro Atlanta.
|  | THE RECAST: You say you don’t represent a party, but you did switch to some fanfare, certainly on the Republican side. Now you’re poised to become the first Black woman to represent the Republican Party in Georgia’s state Legislature. So it’s something about party. Maybe it's no longer having intraparty fights and by switching to the side that’s in power, you don’t have to work as hard to get your ideas across the finish line. MAINOR: My battle was not about getting things done. You're right, the Republicans are in majority, so if they want something passed, it gets passed. The battle was with colleagues — former colleagues — with not wanting to get things done. When I came into politics, I was a Democrat. That is all I knew. That's what the majority of us Black folks know, we just know how to be a Democrat. Coming into this space, I was labeled a moderate or a centrist. I didn't know it was such a thing. So now I am a moderate centrist, on the Republican side. So basically, I'm the same person, same priorities, same values, with an “R” next to my name. Way less headaches and I’ll be able to get way more done for my community. THE RECAST: But the reality is that you’re still representing a deep-blue part of Fulton County that Biden carried. Are you worried that “R” next to your name, in a presidential year, is really going to hamper your reelection chances? MAINOR: I would say Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker are a prime example. Sometimes people do not vote down the ballot [which is why we saw both Kemp, a Republican, and Warnock, a Democrat win].
|  Processed with VSCO with c3 preset | Courtesy of state Rep. Mesha Mainor | So it doesn’t matter who is at the top of the ballot for the Republicans, it's all about what I am offering. Black people are tired of getting nothing, tired of people lying to them, tired of being the last priority in anybody's campaign. I am the one that's saying you are a priority, mainly because you have been so underserved for 50 years since Dr. King died. I'm in that boat with you. I'm trying to bring you out of the darkness and bring you into a situation where you can get some opportunities because no one has been serving you. People cross ballots in the general, and I expect my constituents to vote for Mesha Mainor. It doesn't matter what letter is next to my name. THE RECAST: Have you thought about what your switch to Republican means for the GOP? Certainly having a Black conservative woman who is not only on the ballot in 2024, but is currently serving in office, is something, I would imagine, that Republicans are excited to have and will want to promote. Maybe even a speaking slot during next year’s convention in Milwaukee. MAINOR: If they're excited, I don't know, I can't speak on anybody's excitement. I will help raise the concerns of minorities to anyone who wants to hear. I am not trying to be a poster child to anyone. What I can tell you is after speaking to the Georgia GOP, after speaking to Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, everybody has said: “We don't have anyone in our party who has the ear of minorities. We want to hear from you, so we can hear from them.”
|  | | We get nowhere as minorities by sticking to one side. So I think there's an opportunity for our voices to be raised. The law of economics and scarcity, it only makes us more competitive as far as who is going to try to get our vote. What I'm asking Black Americans and minorities to do is dig into the details, don't listen to the hype and really think about what the parties are offering you. The first thing you can do is look around in your community. If the schools are failing, is there a white Republican on the school board? Is it a white Republican superintendent that's managing the schools where the kids are failing? When you look at the election lines, and they're 3 hours and 5 hours long, is it a white Republican that's managing that election board? I'm just asking the questions. ◆◆◆ Fri-yay is the best day and we’ve made it. Now slide into the weekend with some good vibes and some quick reads. The “personal benefit” of being enslaved is what students in Florida will be learning in schools. POLITICO’s Andrew Atterbury breaks down the latest in the controversial “anti-woke” education policies championed by Florida Gov. and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis. A must-read from POLITICO’s Charlie Mahtesian where he explores how blue-leaning college towns are upending the politics of red-leaning states. A dry season may be upon us among grassroots donors with “a dramatic downturn in small-dollar donations across the board,” write my politics team colleagues Jessica Piper and Brittany Gibson. A gripping story by ProPublica details how a proposal to research ancient ancestral Pueblo artifacts excavated by museums around 1900 ultimately led to further “destructive research” … by other scientists backed with federal funding. On a lighter note — literally — former President Barack Obama is out with his 2023 summer playlist. It includes classics by The Righteous Brothers, Pearl Jam, Otis Redding and Stevie Wonder. Another “Insane in the Membrane” must-view Tiny Desk concert from NPR, this time featuring hip hop icons Cypress Hill.
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| Also, RIP Tony Bennett. Here’s a remembrance. Big sports news: First, fans celebrate the sale of the Washington Commanders. And Kevin Maxen, a coach with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, comes out and is thought to be the first openly gay men’s coach in American pro sports. TikTok of the Day: The more you know
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