Moore is last straw, I’m switching parties

GOP prefers a predator to a Democrat. I’m done.

I’ll never forget the very first City Council meeting I attended in Escondido, near San Diego. I was expecting an elevated exchange of ideas. Instead, I witnessed a political fight that culminated with the mayor banging her gavel more than 50 times to silence a fellow council member.

At the end of the meeting, I went up to the podium and tore into the council for its “unconscionable” demonstration of pettiness and immaturity. The following day, my local newspaper quoted me in a story that ran with my picture. That’s the day I learned about the power of the press and what can happen when you speak out. I was 16.

My political identity was forged at a time when the Republican Party, led by President George W. Bush, was embracing the notion of “compassionate conservatism.” I believed then, as I do now, that government can be an instrument of good that raises the welfare of the citizens it serves.

At the same time, I acknowledge that government needs checks and balances; that left to its own devices, it resists change, transparency and accountability. During my years at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I saw firsthand how the federal government is overrun by waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement and bureaucracy.

I have spent the better part of my adult life working with and for Republicans at every level of government: at City Hall, at the California Legislature, at the U.S. House and Senate, a congressional committee, moderates and conservatives. From Olympia Snowe to Breitbart News, I’ve traveled the entire spectrum of the Republican Party.

On March 8, 2016, then-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski got into a physical altercation with thenBreitbart reporter Michelle Fields. On March 11, after Breitbart refused to stand by Fields, I informed the organization that I would no longer represent it as a spokesman. And so began a long period of self-reflection about my own political compass.

For the first time since high school, I was free from any professional loyalties. It was liberating at first, then sobering and ultimately disappointing. I couldn’t understand how so many in the GOP could stand by, silently, as Donald Trump and Steve Bannon remade and redefined the party. An unrelenting assault on the Constitution, the free press and freedom of expression while Republican “leaders” did nothing. Ignoring legitimate issues while pandering to a fringe that subscribed to an ideology of hate and fear.

Which brings us to Roy Moore and the Senate race in Alabama.

Trump and the Republican National Committee have supported and funded Moore because they would rather elect a sexual predator who preys on teenagers at the local mall than a crimefighting prosecutor who happens to be a Democrat. This is not a party I want to be associated with any longer. This is not a party that is trustworthy enough to protect innocent children from sexual predators. The embrace of Moore by the GOP’s top “leadership” is all the proof you need to know that the party no longer stands for anything.

The more time I spent on my own, with no clients to defend, the more I came to realize that Republican positions on the most pressing challenges facing our society were out of alignment with what I believed. This is a party that constantly buries its head in the sand on climate change, racial profiling, guns, LGBTQ equality, income inequality, food insecurity, paid family leave and the treatment of women.

I believe the Democratic Party will do more to create equality in America than the Republican Party ever will. I believe Democrats will do more to protect the freedoms guaranteed to us in the First Amendment, and to ensure the survival of our planet and its natural resources. I am throwing in with the Democratic Party because I believe its portrait of America is better than the one being painted by today’s Republican Party. And I want to be a part of it.

Kurt Bardella is a former spokesperson for Reps. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Breitbart News.