Making The Switch

The flight of the sane people from the Republican Party continues:

GOP state senator appears ready to switch parties

By Virginia Young

POST-DISPATCHJEFFERSON CITY BUREAU CHIEF

08/01/2007

JEFFERSON CITY — Chris Koster, a Republican state senator and champion of stem cell research, is expected to announce today that he is switching to the Democratic Party.

Koster, a candidate for attorney general next year, will hold news conferences in Columbia, Harrisonville and St. Louis. In a news release, he promised “a speech that may transform the political landscape of Missouri.”

Koster, of Harrisonville near Kansas City, resigned late Tuesday as chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus. His resignation letter, hand-delivered by Koster’s secretary to the office of Senate President Pro Tem Mike Gibbons, gave no explanation.

[…]

Koster was calling major donors Tuesday to alert them to his plans. By late afternoon, word had spread to Democratic operatives. Mike Kelley, a Democratic consultant, said he had “heard it too many places for it not to be true.”

Koster could have had trouble winning a Republican statewide primary because of his strong stance favoring embryonic stem cell research.

His biggest campaign donation was $125,000 from Jim Stowers, co-founder of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City. Stowers and his wife were major supporters last fall of Amendment 2, which protects all forms of embryonic stem research in the state allowed under federal law.

Thanks loads, wingnuts! All you have left are the truly amoral corporate moneygrubbers and the equally-amoral religio-racist righties. No wonder why your fundraising sucks rocks lately.

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