Call it a survival instinct, but for many state lawmakers, being Republican just isn't cool anymore.
Governing Magazine has noticed a trend:
In the last month, Republican state lawmakers Brian Maienschein of California [shown in video above][/shown], Dawn Marie Addiego of New Jersey, and Dinah Sykes, Stephanie Clayton and Barbara Bollier of Kansas announced that they were switching to the Democratic Party.
There's enough discontent among Republicans, particularly women in the suburbs, that makes a switch to the Democratic Party plausible among Republican legislators," says Timothy Nokken, a Texas Tech University political scientist who has studied party switching.
Patrick Miller, a University of Kansas political scientist, echoes that sentiment. "In the districts that they occupy, they're going to be electorally safer as Democrats," he says, referring to the switchers in his state. "They're all in districts that have trended hard to the Democratic Party."
