Former Democratic Rep: 'This Is Not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party'

Former Democratic Alabama Rep. Artur Davis blasted the Democratic Party on Tuesday, confirming in a statement on his website that he is switching his voter registration from Alabama to Virginia and that he is seriously considering a run for Congress in Virginia as a Republican.

The onetime Democrat, who ran for his party's nomination for governor of Alabama in 2010 but was defeated, has since publicly distanced himself from national Democrats and criticized the administration and Democratic leaders in Congress in Politico’s Arena and other forums.

It has been a very public breakup, fueled in part by lingering grievances in the aftermath of Davis’ failed gubernatorial run. But Davis insists that Democrats have changed, not he: “In my early 30s, the Democratic Party managed to engineer the last run of robust growth and expanded social mobility that we have enjoyed . . . But parties change. As I told a reporter last week, 'This is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party.'”

Citing a few specific objections, Davis writes, “I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again. I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured.”

Davis describes his next step in the hypothetical, writing, “If I were to run [for Congress], it would be as a Republican,” but maintaining that he is “nowhere near deciding.”

The former representative is currently a resident fellow with the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.