(Tribune News Service) — When Democratic state Rep. Mesha Mainor defected from her party on Tuesday to become a Republican, she didn’t give herself an easier path to reelection in her Atlanta-based House district, which President Joe Biden carried with roughly 90% of the vote in 2020. It’s such an uphill slog that Mainor could choose not to stand for another term at all.

But in deciding to change parties, Mainor joined a long line of party-switchers in Georgia, some of whom went on to great heights as a massive realignment changed the face of state politics.

Tops on that list were former GOP governors Nathan Deal and Sonny Perdue, who were both prominent rural Democrats as Republicans began to chip away at decades of one-party Democratic rule in Georgia in the 1990s. They both flipped parties, too.

The trend accelerated in the early 2000s when Perdue became the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction and the GOP took control of both chambers of the Legislature. As rural Democratic lawmakers sought more power and influence — and a clearer path to victory — becoming Republicans was their answer.

State Sens. Rooney Bowen, Don Cheeks, Jack Hill and Dan Lee were among the party-switchers representing territories that were fast shifting to the GOP. Some of the House defectors then remain powerbrokers today, including state Reps. Gerald Greene, Butch Parrish and Alan Powell.

The stream of party-switchers has slowed, with a few exceptions.

In 2007, state Rep. Mike Jacobs, a Brookhaven Democrat switched parties as his district morphed into one of the state’s most competitive battlegrounds, but continued to carve out a progressive agenda. He even killed a “religious liberty” measure in 2015, which Deal rewarded him for by tapping him to a DeKalb judicial seat six weeks later, where he remains.

In 2011, Democratic third-term Athens Rep. Doug McKillip became a Republican less than a month after he was elected chairman of the House Democratic caucus. He was defeated in the 2012 GOP primary.

The strangest scenario has involved Vernon Jones, a once-Democratic legislator from a deep-blue slice of DeKalb who was the county’s former chief executive.

A pariah to some of his colleagues from the start, Jones endorsed Donald Trump in April 2020 — and was promptly disowned by fellow Democrats.

Even so, he didn’t switch parties until Jan. 6, 2021, the same day as the violent pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. He later ran a failed campaign for an open U.S. House seat after briefly attempting to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp in the GOP primary.

To bring it full circle, Jones has been one of Mainor’s loudest cheerleaders this week, praising her as “another black independent thinker” to bolt to the GOP. “I knew I wasn’t alone,” he said on social media.

While most Republicans welcomed state Rep. Mesha Mainor with open arms, there were some voices — both private and public — who grumbled that she would eventually cost conservatives a vote on causes like school vouchers, which Mainor supported over Democratic objections.

“Hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but this is bad for school choice,” said veteran GOP strategist Chip Lake. “She can’t win as a Republican in that district, and what incentive would a Democrat have now to support any meaningful legislation on parental choice?”

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