- An Arkansas state senator announced this week that he was leaving the GOP.
- State Sen. Jim Hendren said he left the party after Trump incited the US Capitol riot.
- Hendren accused the Republican Party of a failure of leadership and said that party leaders took a “secondary” approach.
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A former Arkansas state legislator, with deep family connections to the Republican Party, announced this week that he was leaving the Republican Party, citing the growing party division and the Republican Party’s refusal to control former President Donald Trump.
State Sen. Jim Hendren announced that he was leaving the Republican Party and changing his affiliation with the Independent in a nine-minute YouTube video posted on Thursday. In the video, Hendren said that political parties made it possible and even rewarded the growing party division and said he was “deeply concerned” about the state of US politics.
“There is a real danger that the Republican Party is one where you cannot win a primary without being a Trump supporter, and you cannot win a general by being a Trump supporter,” Hendren told CNN in an interview Friday. . “What would have happened, then, is that we took a party that was about principles and about conservative government for one that is about a man and a personality. And this is a race that does not end well for the Republican Party.”
In Thursday’s video, Hendren said his dissatisfaction with the Republican Party’s response to Trump has been going on for years, starting with the former president’s first campaign for the White House. He said on Thursday that he and his conservative beliefs remained constant as the Republican Party changed.
“I saw the former president actively fan the flame of racist rhetoric, mock the disabled, intimidate his enemies and talk about women in ways that would never be tolerated in my home or business,” he said. “After he did this from the highest office in the country, I realized that my daughters and granddaughters were listening, too. And I worried about the example that it set for my children and grandchildren.”
As reported by CNN, Hendren, a native of Arkansas, has served as state legislator in the state since 1995. From 1995 to 2012, Hendren served on the state House of Representatives before moving to the state Senate in 2013. For four years, Hendren was the minority leader in the state Senate. He plans to remain in the Senate as an independent, he said.
“I saw a systemic shift at the heart of our policy that encourages our worst impulses, the most extreme thinking, disables policy making and hurts us all,” said Hendren, a former Air Force fighter pilot. “It would be easy to blame one or a few people for this, but unfortunately it goes deeper and has wider cuts than that.”
Hendren said he witnessed the Republican Party leadership “often staying in the background instead of leading.”
Hendren pointed to the events in Trump’s last few months in office as the moments that pushed him out of the GOP, and said that Trump’s incitement to the deadly US Capitol rebellion on January 6 was the “last straw.”
“For months, I watched as members of my own party and our former president tried to overturn the results of a fair and free election, the very trademark of our democracy, with lies, false statements, conspiracy theories and attempts to subvert the Constitution “, he said.
Hendren is the nephew of Arkansas governor Asa Hutchison, a Republican, and the son of former state legislator Kim Hendren, also a Republican, CNN reported. Hendren told CNN that he did not rule out a candidacy for governor next year, when his uncle ends his second and last term.
Hendren said he founded an organization called Common Ground Arkansas to help create a “place for people who are politically homeless,” he said.
Hendren’s resignation from the Republican Party comes amid a continuing division of the Republican Party. Republican Party members who condemned Trump or voted in favor of his impeachment in the House and removal in the Senate were censored or criticized by members of his own party for abandoning the former president.
The Senate failed last week to condemn Trump for inciting the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, which left five people dead.