Home » What Does Rep. Cotham’s Switch Mean for NC Blacks?

What Does Rep. Cotham’s Switch Mean for NC Blacks?

by The Urban News
State Rep. Tricia Ann Cotham
By Cash Michaels –

State Rep. Tricia Ann Cotham could have easily changed her party affiliation from Democrat to unaffiliated, but she didn’t.

She went full-stop Republican, effectively giving her former party the back of her hand and sending tremors through an already dispirited NC Democratic Party and Governor Roy Cooper.

“The party that best represents me and my principles and what’s best for North Carolina is the Republican Party,” she said during a press conference at NCGOP headquarters in Raleigh last week.

Political analyst Thomas Mills wasn’t buying it in his weekly newsletter Politics North Carolina.

“She embraced the party whose values she rejected just a few months ago,” he wrote. “She didn’t have an epiphany. She had a temper tantrum and pity party. She just wanted somebody to be nice to her. That’s pathetic.”

The Black Political Caucus of Mecklenburg County, which endorsed Cotham in 2022, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP, were also not impressed.

“Regrettably, her shift in values appears to align her more closely with a political faction with a troubling history of policies and rhetoric aimed at suppressing the voices of marginalized groups, including African Americans and women,” the caucus said in a statement. “In embracing this extreme faction, Rep. Cotham has betrayed the trust we placed in her, and we fear that this decision may have severe consequences for the very people she was elected to serve.”

Black Facebook poster Cathay Dawkins lamented, “NO SHAME! She USED Black & Brown Voters & Organizers to win her seat and has now switched parties. NOT OK! Tricia Cotham!”

Next to her post, Dawkins posted a screenshot of Cotham’s May 18, 2022 Facebook post displaying several pictures of Black primary campaign workers proudly displaying “Tricia Cotham” campaign signs and t-shirts under Cotham’s message “We did it!”

To understand the enormity of Rep. Cotham’s switch and…

Read the full article here

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