California lawmaker switches party, criticizes Democratic leadership

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A moderate California Democratic state lawmaker announced Thursday that she is switching to the Republican Party while criticizing her former party’s leadership and policies.

State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil said she had long been a Democrat, but she and the Democratic Party no longer have the same values since she was elected in 2022.

“In the past two years that I’ve been working in the Senate, I have not recognized the party that I belong to,” Alvarado-Gil said in an announcement on “The Steve Hilton Show,” a YouTube series hosted by a former Fox News host and policy adviser to British ex-Prime Minister David Cameron. “The Democratic Party is not the party that I signed up for decades ago.”

Alvarado-Gil represents a largely rural district northeast of the Central Valley. She said the Democratic Party’s policies are hurting middle class and children in California and pushing the state in a wrong direction.

“It’s not a very popular decision to leave a supermajority party where perhaps, you know, you have a lot more power and ability,” she said.

She adds: “But this is a decision that is right for the constituents that voted me into office.”

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