Although the vast majority of Republican elected officials are tethering themselves to President Trump politically, not all are. A former Texas judge appointed by Gov. Rick Perry announced Monday that she was leaving the Republican Party.
“It has taken me years to say this publicly but here I go. President Trump is the worst president in the history of this country,” Elsa Alcala wrote on Facebook, announcing her departure from the GOP, according to the Austin-American Statesman.
“Even accepting that Trump has had some successes — and I believe these are few — at his core, his ideology is racism,” she continued. “To me, nothing positive about him could absolve him of his rotten core.”
In the same post, Alcala said she would be voting in the upcoming Democratic primary.
A six-year veteran of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Alcala said that the unwavering Republican support for Trump in the face of his recent tirade of racist tweets was the last straw.
“Trump speaks about brown people like me as lesser beings,” she told the Statesman in an interview.
Her decision to leave the Republican party came days before the Democratic-led House voted on a resolution to condemn Trump’s racist tweets. Only four Republicans in the House voted yes. Of the 23 Texas GOP members in the House, only one, Rep. Will Hurd, voted for it.
Alcala isn’t the only Republican judge in Texas to switch sides. In 2016, Lauren Parish, a six-term district judge in Texas’ Upshur County also announced she was leaving the Republican Party and cited Trump’s misogyny, racism and use of conspiracy theories as her reasons.
That same year, Terry Jennings, a former Republican judge on the Texas First Court of Appeals also announced he was leaving the GOP. He did not seek re-election after his term ended in 2018.
