SACRAMENTO, California — A moderate Democratic lawmaker from California announced Thursday that she is switching to the Republican Party, while criticizing her former party’s leadership and policies.
Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil said she has been a Democrat for a long time, but that she and the Democratic Party no longer have the same values since she was elected in 2022.
“In the last two years of serving in the Senate, I have not recognized the party that I belong to,” Alvarado-Gil said in an announcement on “The Steve Hilton Show,” a YouTube series hosted by a conservative political commentator. “The Democratic Party is not the party that I signed up for decades ago.”
Alvarado-Gil, who represents a largely rural district northeast of the Central Valley, said Democratic Party policies are hurting California’s middle class and children and pushing the state in the wrong direction.
“It is not a popular decision to leave a party with a supermajority, where you may have much more power and opportunities,” she said.
She adds: “But this is a decision that is right for the voters who voted for me.”
Alvarado-Gil is known for her tough-on-crime support and fiscally conservative outlook, and has also voted with Republicans on labor legislation.
“It takes courage to stand up to California’s supermajority, and Marie has what it takes,” Senate Majority Leader Brian Jones said in a statement. “Her record of tackling crime, protecting communities from sexually violent predators, and prioritizing her constituents speaks for itself.”
Her defection gives Republicans nine votes in the 40-member Senate, still well short of the majority they need to control the chamber. Democrats hold supermajorities in both the Assembly and Senate in the Capitol.
State Senate President Mike McGuire said her decision is “disappointing for the voters” who elected her in 2022.
“They trusted her to represent them, and she betrayed that trust,” he said in a statement.
He added: “One bright spot is that MAGA Republicans are gaining a pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ+ rights, anti-Trump colleague. We wish her the best of luck.”
Alvarado-Gil, who represents a conservative-leaning district, won her 2022 election against a progressive Democrat by more than 5 points after the duo defeated six Republican candidates in the primary. Her district has shifted slightly Republican since 2022, with Republicans holding nearly 39% of registered voters to Democrats’ 34% in 2024.
Alvarado-Gil is not up for re-election until 2026.
There have been 273 legislators who have switched parties while in office in California history, and it is even rarer for a member of the majority party to switch to another party, said Alex Vassar, legislative historian at the California State Library. The most recent example was when former Assemblymember Dominic Cortese left the Democratic Party in 1995 to join Ross Perot’s Reform Party.