'Had enough': Fed-up Republican ditches 'party I once called home'

Oregon state Rep. Cyrus Javadi announced on Friday that he's leaving the GOP.

In an announcement on Substack, Javadi wrote that he's "had enough."

"What’s changed isn’t me. It’s the party I once called home," he explained.

Earlier this week, Javadi cast a tax vote that infuriated some Republicans, reported Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB).

The catalyst, however, Javadi said, came at the end of June over the dramatic federal cuts to Medicaid and the GOP's refusal to step in to fix it at the state level.

"Protecting Medicaid benefits for the nearly 60% of children in Tillamook and Clatsop counties? Opposed. Keeping rural hospitals afloat? Opposed. Preserving students’ access to books that reflect who they are? Opposed. Protecting the First Amendment rights of people different from ourselves? Opposed," he wrote. 'Not because the policies were flawed. But because helping me deliver for my district didn’t fit the Republican Party’s agenda."

While he's not at the state Capitol, Javadi works as a dental surgeon. When he returned to the office, he found that one of the windows of his practice had been smashed out. He said he wasn't shocked by the rage; rather, he expected it, in large part because the purpose of the party is not to work on bipartisan solutions like potholes and keep hospitals open, but simply to "vote no."

"We don’t care what the problem is, just vote no, or else," Javadi said of his former party. "Good policy doesn’t need a party label. It’s good because the problem is real and the solution works, not because one side decides to bless it."

While he believes his friends and voters in his district are rational and kind Republicans, he said that "the party apparatus is headed somewhere else entirely."

"It’s not about governing. It’s about burning things down," Javadi complained. "It’s about isolating minority communities when politically convenient. It’s about waving the Constitution when it helps your argument and ignoring it when it doesn’t. That’s not conservative. That’s opportunistic. And it corrodes everything it touches."

He said that Democrats are far from perfect, but they aim to govern and address issues, and they are willing to debate them.

During the session, he said it wasn't Republicans who were willing to do things to help his district but Democrats "who stepped up to support the priorities of the coast."

That's why he intends to run for reelection, but he'll do it as a Democrat.

Read the full column here.