‘We Have a Problem’: Georgia Legislature’s First Black Republican Woman Explains Why She Switched Parties

When Georgia state representative Mesha Mainor switched parties last week, she consulted God and her campaign manager. As the assembly’s newest Republican, her blood pressure is now 115, the lowest it’s been since college.

“I took it to me, and the Lord, and my campaign manager, and one or two other close friends that would support me in the decision because they could care less if I’m a Republican or Democrat,” she said.

The life-long Democrat announced her decision to join the Republican Party on Tuesday, making her the first black Republican woman to serve in the Georgia assembly. Democrats have “mutilated” and “sabotaged” the representative since her appointment in 2020, Mainor said, while Republicans have supported her.

“It was always exceptionally easy to deal with the Republicans. Everything that I wanted to do was for my community and I remember speaker pro tempore Jan Jones saying one day, ‘I want to help you since you actually want to help your community.’ That was not taken the same way from the Democrats.”

Mainor broke with fellow Democrats on several issues during her time in the legislature, including police funding and prosecutorial oversight, but it was her vocal support for school choice that led to “harassment and intimidation” from her colleagues.

Although she’s faced scrutiny from Democrats in the legislature — state senator Josh McLaurin is offering $1,000 to anyone willing to challenge Mainor — the representative said her constituents have been supportive.

“I am running on what my community wants,” she said. “What my community wants are the things that the Republicans are pushing — they just don’t know that the Democrats do not support what they want.”

Mainor’s goal hasn’t changed with her party designation: She still wants to make Georgians in the 56th district as independent as possible. Although Democrats called Mainor’s decision a “stinging betrayal” to her deep-blue district, which voted for Joe Biden by an almost 90 percent margin in the 2020 election, Mainor won her previous two elections on a school-choice platform.

An Atlanta native who spent 20 years as a physical therapist, Mainor has two daughters who attend school in Georgia.

“My mom shipped me off to another community to go to a school with better performing schools and as a result of that, I am sure I’m where I am because of that decision,” Mainor said, explaining that her mother used a family member’s address so she could attend school in a neighboring district. “In Georgia, that is illegal. You go to jail if you lie and use someone else’s address to attend a school.”

“My district has the most charter schools in any other district in the state of Georgia. My district already is quite upset with the current state of the public school system,” she added.

Students in her district can’t perform simple math, Mainor said, and many teachers are resigning because they are graduating students who don’t know how to read.

Sixteen Republicans — six of whom were endorsed by teachers’ unions — in rural districts voted against Georgia’s school-choice bill in May. Mainor was the only Democrat who broke party lines to vote for the measure, which failed by four votes.

“I think my switch to the party is not only showing [my] colleagues and showing America in Georgia that we have a problem on our hands,” she said. “We are no longer beholden to the teachers union. The teachers are not the problem, it’s the teachers’ unions and the bureaucracy that they are uplifting. We can no longer be beholden to the superintendents — of course superintendents don’t want elected officials to support school choice.”

Now that Republicans have a stronger majority, the representative hopes that education will be a winning factor in the next election.

“Elected leaders are forgetting that parents are their voters,” she said.

Several blue lawmakers in Georgia who “say they are diverse and inclusive” proved to Mainor after her announcement that, “diversity and inclusion have some limits.” State democrats have attacked Mainor as a “narcissist,” and the Democratic Party of Georgia said that Mainor’s decision serves “personal political ambitions” instead of her constituents.

But Mainor says her Christian faith has allowed her to brush off the attacks.

“Politics is such a rapidly moving environment, with lots of different characters,” Mainor said. “I am very rooted in who I am. Even with this decision — the social media posts, the emails that I’m getting — people are vile. It does not bother me, you can call me anything you want. I know who I am. [My faith] has prepared me to handle the backlash because I only answer to one person. And that’s not even a person — I only answer to the Alpha and the Omega, and everything else is taken care of.”

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect that Mainor’s mother used a family member’s address so she could attend a better school.