HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – In the 36 hours after last week’s deadly uprising at the US Capitol, 112 Republicans contacted the electoral office in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to change their party record. Ethan Demme was one of them.
“Since they started to deny the election result, I kind of knew I was going in that direction,” said Demme, who is the former president of the county Republican Party and opposed President Donald Trump and is now independent. “If they continued, I knew there was no way to continue. But if you’ve been a Republican your whole life, it’s hard to jump off a big boat and get on a small boat. “
Authorities are seeing similar scenes unfold elsewhere.
In Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 192 people have changed their party record since the January 6 riot. Only 13 switched to the Republican Party – the other 179 switched to Democrat, independent or third, according to Bethany Salzarulo, director of the polling station.
In Linn County, Iowa, home to Cedar Rapids, more than four dozen voters abandoned their Republican Party affiliations 48 hours after the Capitol attack. Most of them moved to no party, said election commissioner Joel Miller, although a small number took the unusual step of canceling their registration altogether.
The party change pales in comparison to the more than 74 million people who voted for President Donald Trump in November. And it is not clear whether they are united in their motivations. Some may be rejecting the policy altogether, while others may be leaving a Republican Party that they fear will be less loyal to Trump.
But they offer a first sign of the volatility ahead for the Republican Party, as the party prepares for the political consequences of the riots that Trump has incited.
“I really think there is a tangible shift from automatic president defense to ‘wow, that went too far,'” said Kirk Adams, the former Republican president of the Arizona House of Representatives.
Adams said he knew several people, including Trump supporters, who are changing their records. He said it could take weeks or months before the full impact of the uprising is clear.
“Minds are changing,” he said. “But you can’t go from overnight to ‘I think the president is right and the election is being stolen’ to ‘I think he was wrong about everything.'”
The party record does not always show how voters will actually vote, especially when the next national elections will take place in almost two years. But party leaders across the country are expressing concern that the disturbances could have a lasting impact.
The Republican Party cannot afford to drop any of its ranks after an election that, even with record Republican turnout, saw them lose control of the United States presidency and Senate.
“More and more I have been looking at my party in this state and our numbers are decreasing,” said Gary Eichelberger, a commissioner in the suburban district of Cumberland, Pennsylvania. “If we narrow the party’s base, we will lose this county.”
Republicans in Washington are approaching the moment with caution, denouncing the insurrection and offering a meager defense of Trump. But so far, few have adhered to Democratic calls for impeachment and immediate removal of the president.
Only two Senate Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, have asked Trump to step down.
Several Republican Party officials said there was some discomfort about the party’s direction at the winter RNC meeting in Amelia Island, Florida, which occurred a few days after the attack. Serious talks are underway at the committee to conduct a comprehensive review of the 2020 election results to determine what the party did wrong and how to better attract voters, according to Henry Barbour, a member of Mississippi’s RNC.
But Trump still has an influence on GOP base bands.
A Quinnipiac poll released on Monday found that about three-quarters of Republicans believe Trump’s false claims that there was widespread voter fraud in the November election, which is what triggered the Capitol attack after Trump asked a crowd of supporters who went to Congress as defined to certify the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.
Overall, 7 out of 10 Republicans approved Trump’s performance as president, compared with 89% in the December poll of Quinnipiac.
“When you love President Trump, you love President Trump,” said Michele Fiore, a woman on the Nevada RNC committee. “With all our heart, we support you. We know that he did not create the chaos that happened in Washington, DC, on January 6. “
Rae Chornenky, who stepped down as president of the Republican Party of Maricopa County, Arizona, shortly after the election amid a power struggle with party members who alleged widespread electoral fraud, said he thinks the president still has a hammer in the roots of the party.
“They just believe it was a stolen election and they are not going to back down in that position,” said Chornenky. “He will be the driving force” of the GOP for years to come, Chornenky predicted of Trump.
The mid-term elections of 2022 can test this. Former MP Ryan Costello is strongly considering a Republican candidacy for the Pennsylvania Senate seat. A longtime critic of Trump, he sees the moment as ripe for an explicitly anti-Trump GOP candidate.
“We need people who are willing to lose races, lose political campaigns, because of that,” said Costello. “We need campaigns to clean up the party. Sometimes it is not possible to dance around landmines. Sometimes, you just need to jump there. ”
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Riccardi, from Denver. The writers of the Associated Press Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Hannah Fingerhut in Washington; Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; Steve Peoples in New York; and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.