HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – In the 36 hours following last week’s deadly uprising at the US Capitol, 112 Republicans reached out to the election office in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to change their party registration. Ethan Demme was one of them.
“Ever since they started denying the election result, I knew it was going this way,” said Demme, who is the country’s former Republican Party chairman and has opposed President Donald Trump and is now an independent. “If they kept going, I knew I could not go on. But if you were an entire Republican, it’s hard to jump out of a big boat and jump into a small boat. ‘
Officials see similar scenes unfolding elsewhere.
In Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 192 people have changed their party registration since the January 6 riot. Only 13 have joined the GOP – according to Bethany Salzarulo, the director of the Electoral Bureau, the other 179 have changed to Democrats, Independents or a third party.
In Linn County, Iowa, home of Cedar Rapids, more than four dozen voters abandoned their affiliations with the Republican Party in the 48 hours after the Capitol attack. Electoral Commissioner Joel Miller mostly did not move to any party, although a small number took the extremely unusual step of canceling their registrations altogether.
The party link pales in comparison to the more than 74 million people who voted for President Donald Trump in November. And it is unclear whether they are motivated. Some may reject politics altogether, while others may leave a Republican Party that they fear will be less loyal to Trump.
But they provide an early sign of the volatility ahead for the IDP, as the party supports the political fallout from the riots that Trump has sparked.
“I think there’s a tangible shift, from the president’s knee defense to ‘wow, that was a bridge too far,'” said Kirk Adams, the former Republican Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives.
Adams said he knew several people, including once Trump supporters, who changed their registrations. He said it could take weeks or months before the full impact of the uprising is clear.
“Minds are changing,” he said. “But you can not go overnight from ‘I think the president’s right and the election are stolen’ to ‘I think he was wrong about everything. ”
Party registration does not always give an example of how voters will cast their vote, especially if the next national election is almost two years away. But party leaders across the country are expressing concern that the riots could have a lasting impact.
The GOP could not afford to slip into its ranks after an election, even with a record-breaking Republican turnout, they lost control of both the presidency and the U.S. Senate.
“I have increasingly looked to my party in this state and our numbers are declining,” said Gary Eichelberger, a commissioner in suburban Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. “If we narrow the base of the party, we will lose this province.”
Republicans in Washington approach the moment with caution, condemning the uprising and offering a scant defense of Trump. But so far few have joined the Democratic calls for the president’s accusation and immediate removal.
Only two Senate Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, have asked Trump to resign.
Several GOP officials said there was discomfort over the party’s leadership during the RNC winter rally on Amelia Island, Florida, which took place a few days after the attack. According to Henry Barbour, a RNC member from Mississippi, there are serious discussions in the committee to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the 2020 election results to determine what the party did wrong and how to better appeal to voters to do.
But Trump still has a pull in the GOP base.
In a Quinnipiac poll released Monday, about three-quarters of Republicans believe Trump’s false statements that there was widespread fraud in November’s election caused the attack on the Capitol, after Trump spurred a crowd of supporters had to go to Congress as it was. set to ratify the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.
A total of 7 and 10 Republicans approved Trump’s performance as president, compared to 89% in Quinnipiac’s December poll.
“If you like President Trump, you love President Trump,” said Michele Fiore, a wife of the Nevada RNC Committee. “With all our heart we support him. We know he did not create the chaos that took place on January 6 in Washington, DC. ‘
Rae Chornenky, who stepped down as president of the Maricopa County Republican Party in Arizona shortly after the election amid a power struggle with those in the state party who claim widespread fraud in the election, said she thinks the president still has’ a hammer block on the party’s ground level.
“They just believe it was a stolen election, and they will not relinquish that position,” Chornenky said. “He will be the driving force behind the GOP for years to come,” Trump’s Chornenky predicted.
The mid-term elections in 2022 could be a test for that. Former Rep. Ryan Costello is strongly considering running for Republican for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat. As a longtime Trump critic, he considers the time ripe for an explicit anti-Trump GOP candidate.
“We need people who are willing to lose races, lose political campaigns, about this,” Costello said. “We need campaigns to clean up the party. Sometimes it is not possible to dance around landmines. Sometimes you just have to jump in there. ‘
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Beaumont reports from Des Moines, Iowa, and Riccardi from Denver. Associated Press Writers Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Hannah Fingerhut in Washington; Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; Steve Peoples in New York; and Julie Carr Smyth of Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.