Citing what she called President Trump’s racist ideology, Elsa Alcala, a retired Republican judge on the state’s highest criminal court, announced on Facebook that she can no longer support the GOP and has left the party.
“It has taken me years to say this publicly but here I go. President Trump is the worst president in the history of this country,” Alcala wrote. “Even accepting that Trump has had some successes — and I believe these are few — at his core, his ideology is racism. To me, nothing positive about him could absolve him of his rotten core.”
Appointed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, Alcala spent 20 years as a GOP judge, also serving in a trial court and intermediate appeals court.
Alcala said Trump’s behavior, including a recent tweet suggesting that four Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back” to the countries they came from, combined with state and national Republican Party support for the president, weighed on her conscience.
“Every day with the Republican Party seemed worse than the day before. Trump speaks about brown people like me as lesser beings,” Alcala told the American-Statesman. “It’s cliche to say, but the Republican Party left me.”
Trump, Alcala added, seeks to exclude “people who look like me.”
“I thought that maybe Texas state politics at the Legislature might be better than the national Republican politics, but it was more of the same,” she said.
“The current Republican Party supports Trump, so I cannot support that party in Texas or nationally,” Alcala wrote. “The past Republican administrations were not Trump-like — they wanted an inclusive party — and I appreciate their past support of me, but that is no more.”
Texas Republicans, who have been far more likely to celebrate Democratic defections to the GOP for more than two decades, found themselves on defense after losing one of their own.
“We thank Judge Alcala for her service, and we are sorry that she has chosen to no longer support the party that supported her, her colleagues and her successors,” said James Dickey, chairman of the Republican Party of Texas.
Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, thanked Alcala for “speaking out against Trump Republican racism.”
“The decision by Judge Alcala is proof Texas Democrats are fighting for a fair shot for all and represent Texas’ diverse new majority,” Hinojosa said.
Alcala said she will vote in the 2020 Democratic primary, adding that “any of the viable Democratic presidential candidates are superior to the status quo.”
“I hope Democrats rise to the occasion and put forth some very qualified candidates and that every polling station will be overwhelmed with voters,” she wrote.
“And don’t tell me to go back where I came from. My relatives have been in this Texas area since it was before the USA and I was born in the USA,” Alcala wrote.