North Carolina Dem-Turned-Rep Tricia Cotham Was A Plant All Along

Now that's grooming.

North Carolina state Rep. Tricia Cotham ding-dong-ditched the Democratic Party in April, and since then, her stunned former colleagues haven’t had time to reflect on her betrayal. They’ve been too busy coping with its impact.

Despite running as a pro-choice champion in 2022, the freshly minted Republican Cotham cast the decisive vote in May to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto and enact a 12-week abortion ban. And she wasn’t done.

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NC State Rep Switches Parties, Screws Democrats, Women, LGBTQ Community, Pretty Much Everyone

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Cotham’s defection empowered state Republicans with a veto-proof supermajority and Cotham has reliably voted to overturn a series of vetoes from Cooper. This includes six just on June 27. She’ll likely help override Cooper’s July vetoes of three anti-LGBTQ bills, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. She’s personally sponsored a bill that expands student eligibility for private-school vouchers.

Southern Democrats have flipped parties in the past. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana was once a Democrat who endorsed John Kerry for president over George W. Bush in 2004 but then went full Foghorn Leghorn Republican in 2007. As a Democratic operative in Louisiana put it, “He saw, to his credit, what was coming. The state was getting redder.”

Opportunism has its privileges.

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NC GOP Rep. Tricia Cotham's Position On Abortion As Unwavering As Her Party Allegiance ... Oh Crap.

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However, recent reporting from the New York Times paints Cotham as a “Republican plant,” as if this were a remake of the Manchurian Candidate. Cotham had served a decade in the North Carolina House of Representatives when she declined to run for re-election in 2016 and instead challenged US House Rep. Alma Adams in a newly redrawn 12th Congressional District. Adams, who’s Black, beat her by more than 20 points.

Hmm, this seems relevant to later events.

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When Cotham later considered a return to the North Carolina House, she received counsel from Republican House Speaker Tim Moore and John Bell, the Republican majority leader.

“I encouraged her to run because she was a really good member when she served before,” Mr. Bell recalled in an interview.

She doesn’t seem like a very subtle plant. There were other obvious signs of her perfidy: She’d worked as a lobbyist for charter schools, a lucrative but obvious flip from her position while in elected office. (Kinda think Republicans would notice if someone running in their primary had previously lobbied for gun safety.) She also ghosted Democratic activists who offered to help her 2022 campaign. It was kind of like she was a Republican all along.

Ms. Cotham’s top campaign donors included the North Carolina Dental Society PAC — which gave almost exclusively to Republican candidates — and the North Carolina Health Care Facilities PAC, which gave mainly to Republicans.

Cotham easily won the Democratic primary and then moonwalked to victory over her Republican opponent, Tony Long. That’s the Republican Party’s ideal election, one where both candidates are Republicans.

Susan Rinkunas at Jezebel writes that Cotham deliberately “[fooled] voters in her very blue Charlotte-area district into thinking she strongly supported abortion rights.” And it’s true that leading up to the primary, when news had just broken about the Dobbs draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Cotham tweeted:  “Now, more than ever, we need leaders who will be unwavering and unapologetic in their support of abortion rights. I’ll fight to codify Roe in the #NcGA and continue my strong record of defending the right to choose. #ncpol #womensrights #SCOTUS #Meckleburg.”

So, it’s fair to say that voters might’ve chosen her to help stop anti-abortion forces, not join them. But voters could’ve used guidance from Democratic officials, who perhaps should’ve noticed that despite her family history with the party, she’d reportedly “grown alienated from Democratic Party officials and ideals.” She was also reportedly pissed that Democrats treated her as a normal freshman upon her return to the North Carolina House. Meanwhile, according to the Times, “Republican leaders cultivated her before she ran and, seeing her growing estrangement, seized a chance to coax her across party lines.”

Now, that’s a very clear example of grooming.

After screwing over state Democrats and her constituents, Cotham has become “a rock star among the Republican Party activists and voter base,” according to Republican US House Rep. Dan Bishop, who’d encouraged Cotham to switch parties.

Her “rock star status” earned her a standing ovation at North Carolina’s state Republican convention in June. She even met privately with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and former Vice President Mike Pence, which I guess makes them the starstruck groupies in this scenario.

State Democrats remain gobsmacked, however, especially those who “have known her since she was a child,” said Pat Cotham, the rock star Republican’s mother.

They apparently weren’t great judges of character.

[New York Times]

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