Former Senate Education chair to switch parties

Posted by Peter Hancock January 13, 2013 at 2:51 p.m.

Former Senate Education chair to switch parties

Jean Schodorf, former chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, announced on Facebook Sunday that she will officially switch her party affiliation to Democrat on Monday.

Schodorf, who is from Wichita, was one of several moderate Republican senators who were defeated in the Aug. 2 primaries by conservatives backed by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Gov. Sam Brownback.

As chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, she was instrumental last year in blocking passage of Brownback's proposal to overhaul the state school finance system.

"As a lifelong (R)epublican I feel as though the Republican Party, nationally and at the state level, no longer represents me," Schodorf said in her Facebook post Sunday afternoon.

Shortly after the primary, Schodorf announced that she planned to leave the Republican Party, but had not decided whether to register as a Democrat or unaffiliated. She said at the time that she wanted to help form a moderate-centrist coalition in Kansas.

Schodorf said she will go to the Sedgwick County election office at 4:15 Monday to re-register as a Democrat.

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FlintHawk 4 months ago

Wow.

yourworstnightmare 4 months ago

Needs to start happening more. The GOP has deserted moderation and has been metastasized by right.

srj 4 months ago

The party is pushing out women, who are more moderate then men as a whole.

Cant_have_it_both_ways 4 months ago

Joe Liberman anyone... The party has nothing to do with it. She is a loser and blames her defeat on the party and not what she stood or stand for. Looks like all her problems are external to her and are created by someone else.

speedy47 4 months ago

Party has a lot to do with it. The Republican Party no longer represents any woman with a brain. I switched when Scam became the Gov.

bhall87 4 months ago

Her defeat was because of her party. They ran another Republican against her, dragged her name through the mud then made sure the door hit her on the @$$ on the way out. Instead of usurping a party with respectable ties to good politicians, the Tea Party should've started their own political party.

riverdrifter 4 months ago

Congratulations to Jean for ditching the teabaggers. A better person doesn't need them in their life.

question4u 4 months ago

The Republican party is definitely not what it was, and the exodus of people like Schodorf suggests that it will not regain its former ideals anytime soon. If Dwight Eisenhower were alive today, would he still want his presidential library to be located in Kansas? He certainly would have been appalled by Brownback, as would have Theodore Roosevelt.

Dwight Eisenhower: "Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those -- regardless of their political party -- who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass."

Theodore Roosevelt: "It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs."

Today the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity would lead campaigns against Roosevelt and Eisenhower if they were alive and running for office in Kansas. Flim-Flam Sam would lend his aid against them, and the majority of Kansans would send them packing in elections. The idea that the Kansas Republican party, purged of all moderation, has any connection with the illustrious tradition of the GOP is simply ludicrous. It's not surprising that Schodorf has reluctantly left the party, which has been overrun by extremists who no longer care to support the American ideals of their predecessors in the GOP.