Don’t let the door hit you, etc etc etc.
State Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Houston Democrat who was defeated in her primary earlier this year, announced Friday she is switching to the Republican Party.
Thierry was ousted by primary challenger Lauren Ashley Simmons in the May runoff after she sided with Republicans last year on a handful of bills opposed by the LGBTQ+ community, including a measure barring gender-transitioning care for minors. She delivered an emotional speech from the House floor explaining why she broke with her party, remarks that went viral.
In a statement, Thierry said she switched parties because the Democratic Party “has veered so far left, so deep into the progressive abyss, that it now champions policies that I cannot, in good conscience, support.”
“I am leaving the left because the left has abandoned Democrats who feel betrayed by a party that has lost its way, lost its commitment to hard working families,” Thierry said.
Thierry was announced earlier this month as the director of political strategy for the U.S. wing of Genspect, an international anti-trans policy group. Founded in 2021 by an Irish psychotherapist, the group is part of a broader network of organizations that oppose gender-transitioning care for minors, and its members have testified in favor of bills across the world that would ban or limit the practice.
[…]
State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said Thierry had “chosen to continue to betray the values and priorities of her constituents” and “once again put money and title above principle.”
“If Thierry looks at a party taking away the freedom for women to control their bodies, cutting healthcare for millions, and led by a racist, petty convict and says I want in on that mess, I think that says more about Shawn Thierry than about the Democratic Party,” Martinez Fischer said in a statement. “Adios.”
What a massive upgrade the voters in HD146 gave themselves. Just stunning to contemplate.
The thing about this is that before Thierry went all JK Rowling, she was more or less a normie Dem legislator. As recently as the fall of 2022, she was being touted by Planned Parenthood for being “a champion for maternal health policies”, and celebrated the year before by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund for being one of five co-authors of HB3825, a “critical step towards restoring patient access and repairing the reproductive health care safety net across the state following a decade of political attacks”. I wonder, now that she’s a Republican, will she repudiate all of this work she once did? Does she now oppose all abortions and restrictions on guns? Does she support restrictions on voting rights and mass deportations and private school vouchers? Does she regret voting to impeach Ken Paxton? I’m just asking.
Not that I really care – believe me, I plan to spend zero time thinking about Shawn Thierry ever again. We got the better of this deal by far. The Chron has more, if for some reason you want to read more.