A Democratic state representative in Florida announced she was switching to the Republican Party just over a month after getting reelected—fortifying the GOP’s considerable grasp on the state’s legislature. Rep. Susan Valdés, who was recently re-elected in November for her final term representing parts of the Tampa metropolitan area, announced her party switch in a post on X on Monday, insisting she would not “waste my final two years in the Florida Legislature being ignored in a caucus whose leadership expects me to ignore the needs of my community.” Valdés’ departure from the Democratic Party comes only one week after she lost an election for chair of the Hillsborough County Democratic Party, Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell said in her own statement slamming the move as a “bait-and-switch.” Before the election in November, Valdés was an outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump and attended local events for Kamala Harris, the Tampa Bay Times reported. She even penned an op-ed in the newspaper only a year earlier comparing the Republican-lead government of Florida to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. Valdés seemed to address some of this disconnect in her statement on Monday, telling her constituents “I know I won’t agree with my fellow Republican House members on every issue, but I know that in their caucus, I will be welcomed and treated with respect.”
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