NORTH HAVERHILL — Two elected Grafton County officials announced that they have left the Democratic Party to join Republicans.
Both said the Democrats no longer align with their political beliefs.
Wendy Piper, a Grafton County commissioner currently serving her fourth term, and Kelley Monahan, first elected register of deeds in 2011 and in her eighth term, said separately that the Democratic Party has strayed from the ideals and commitment to working-class families it represented when they were growing up and later entered elected office.
Piper said that her decision to switch parties was “a long time coming” and a “difficult decision for me, I’ve been a Democrat nearly my entire life.” She explained that she is out of step with where Democrats stand on many issues — which she described as “ineffective policies” — and more in sync with Republican views on how how to handle the economy.
”There has been tremendous winners and losers in globalization, global capitalism, that’s left our cities and people without access to a middle-class lifestyle,” Piper, who served as a state representative from Enfield for two terms before she was elected a county commissioner as a Democrat in 2016, said in an interview with the Valley News on Wednesday.
Democrats are preoccupied with focusing on “niche issues like gender identity” and have forsaken the values that once made them champions of the working and middle class families, said Piper, a former English and writing instructor at Dartmouth College who cites growing up “lower middle class” in a trailer in the Lakes Region as formative in shaping her views.
Monahan, an Orford resident, told the Valley News on Tuesday that “viciousness” by county party leaders directed at her for dissenting from the party orthodoxy and “their tunnel vision in checking off the boxes you have to check to be a good Democrat” led to her decision to leave the party.
Monahan said she had identified as a Democrat “since Nixon.”
Although Grafton County has tended to lean Democratic in recent election cycles, Piper and Monahan maintained they haven’t changed so much as the Democratic Party changed.
“Despite calls by national leaders to return to ‘kitchen table’ issues, state Democrats remain focused on such issues as gender identity and support for undocumented immigrants,” Piper wrote in an op-ed this week in announcing her decision to switch to the Republican party.
In justifying her switch to the GOP, Piper cited what she said is Democrats’ weak record on enforcing border security, which she noted even some liberal politicians of an older generations took seriously.
”Bernie Sanders wanted to tighten the border. Bill Clinton wanted to tighten the border. (Late) Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan wanted to tighten the border. And the reason why is because they wanted to protect the livelihoods of their constituents,” Piper said.
County Democrats were respectful of Piper’s decision to switch allegiances — to a point.
“Democrats in the district have appreciated Commissioner Piper’s work on behalf of the citizens in Grafton County, and respect her freedom to choose the political party that best suits her,” state Rep. Mary Hakken-Phillips, D-Hanover, the Upper Valley regional chairwoman of Grafton County Democrats, said via email to the Valley News.
“The citizens of Grafton County depend on the county for essential public services, and we hope that Commissioner Piper isn’t too distracted by her new ideological convictions to focus on the business of the county for the remainder of her term in office,” she added.
Although Piper represents a Democrat-leaning district, her decision to move to the other side of the aisle will be moot.
”Regardless of the decision of mine to change parties, I had not intended to run for another term,” Piper said on Monday. She acknowledged that constituents might be angry over her decision, and said she had already heard from some.
”For the people that might feel disappointment or anger, I’m sorry. I understand those feelings,” Piper said. “But I feel it was the Democratic Party that left me,” adding, “I have to vote my conscience.”
Piper said she is not lockstep in agreement with the MAGA-wing of the GOP and Trump administration policies, but she believes the Republicans embrace a “big tent” strategy that can accommodate dissenting voices.
“There’s room for a lot of disagreement” within the GOP, she said, citing as one example “I don’t think we should be shipping people to El Salvador,” referring to deportees the Trump administration has been sending to prison there.
Although Piper said she strongly supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, operations around the country, she nonetheless believes the process should reflect “moderation and due process.”
Monahan said she can’t be labeled politically and does not agree with everything advocated by President Donald Trump’s MAGAified Republican Party.
“I’m for a woman’s reproductive rights,” Monahan said.
And unlike the influential base of the GOP, she said that although she “believes in a higher power … I am not a Christian.”
And although Monahan said she endorses the deportation raids by ICE she supports allowing undocumented immigrants who work as farm laborers, in the restaurant and in the hotel industry who are vital to the economy to remain in the country.
“We know darn well Americans aren’t picking their own strawberries,” she said.
But on issues from securing the borders, favoring a strong military, tariffs, the economy, and gun rights — “I’m a gun owner,” she said — Monahan said she likes that Trump “keeps his promises.”
“I wasn’t about to vote for Trump the first time around but he earned my vote the second time around,” she said.
Piper said Republicans in New Hampshire have the track record to show their policies are working, ticking off rankings in which the state leads areas such as “child well-being,” the lowest rate of child poverty, high median household annual income, low state taxes, and overall health and safety.
“The enormous class divide that defines our time has been demonstrated by populist uprisings across the globe: Brexit in the United Kingdom, MAGA here at home, and of course, the ‘yellow-jacket’ protests in France,” Piper wrote. “For anyone willing to see it, such movements demonstrate the disenfranchisement felt by working people in the face of trade and economic policies that have left them behind.”
“I don’t know if the Democratic Party will return to reality and I don’t care. I see the good work being done by my Republican colleagues, and I’m eager to join in,” she said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
