A month ago The Free Press reported how radical leftists in the Nevada Democratic Party had seized power, indicating moderate Democrats would be purged.
The first high-profile casualty – for Nevada at least – of that move outside the party hierarchy came Tuesday. John Lee, the mayor of North Las Vegas, which at 250,000 people is Nevada’s fourth-largest city, switched from being a Democrat to a Republican.
Lee, appearing on Fox News, said he couldn’t abide “card-carrying socialists” taking control of his former party. A month ago, The Intercept reported that a group of self-proclaimed democratic socialists and backers of Sen. Bernie Sanders had swept elections for the Democrats’ executive committee.
“It’s not the party that I grew up with 25 years ago,” Lee told Fox News. “And it’s not the party I can stand with anymore.”
Lee said the working class, long thought to be the Democrats’ traditional base, has been abandoned for the “elitists” and the “socialists.” “That is not the agenda that I have in mind for this country for the future,” Lee said.
On that point, the Free Press reported in mid-February on a poll that had found over the past decade, the percentage of blue-collar voters who sided with the Republicans had jumped by 12 percentage points, while the number in that group that had identified as Democrats had dropped by 8 points.
“We are not for expanding the government to even bigger and more intrusive into our lives. That’s not what we want out West. And we’re not going to accept it anymore,” said Lee.
In a follow-up interview with The Federalist, Lee said, “Here in Nevada, we’ve seen the full takeover of the Democratic Party by admitted socialists. I will not let the America I love, be hijacked by an extremist left-wing mob that blacklists, bans, shouts down, and cancels anyone who disagrees with them.”
He added, “The cancel culture has wiped you out … Whatever Democratic Party I thought I was associated with was not the party that just came in. If it’s happening in Nevada, it’s happening everywhere.”
The Federalist described Lee as “a pro-life, A-rated NRA-endorsed politician who voted for President Donald Trump twice.” Makes one wonder why his switch took so long.