Self-preservation is a key component in most politicians DNA. Self-pity is another, and when things go wrong in within a political party we often times see feuding, fussing and even party switching. The history of party switching in Florida during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s sometimes had to do with conviction but usually had more to do with political winds, personal  issues or future opportunities for office.

Yesterday’s news that Ana Rivas Logan, a former  Miami-Dade county School Board member and state legislator  had defected from the GOP to the Democrats sent off celebrations and speculation among some in her new party, but also was met with consternation by many more issues based Democrats.

Rivas Logan when serving on the Miami-Dade School Board was a strong proponent of the school “choice” initiatives that the GOP under Jeb Bush made a fundamental tenet of their ideology in the state during the 1990s and 2000s. Then as a State Legislator she voted as a GOP partisan opposing women’s reproductive rights and gay rights, while supporting more school “choice” plans and the Republican economic agenda.

Her party switch is bizarre if looking from an ideological perspective. Recent converts to the Democratic side like Nancy Argenziano and Charlie Crist had issues where they most certainly aligned with Democrats. Crist perhaps out of opportunism and Argenizano more out of conviction (The former State Rep. and State Senator was always independent minded and her party switch was a natural progression of things). But Crist was never a hard-right conservative even when he was in the State Senate angling to be a player in the GOP- he was conservative but never accumulated the sort of voting record Rivas Logan did, which was largely in lockstep with Speaker Dean Cannon and incoming leader Will Weatherford.

Party switching in this state began in earnest in the 1970s when some Democrats were concerned about the direction Reubin Askew was taking the state. Askew who was named one of the ten best US Governors of the 20th Century by Harvard University set Florida on an activist modern course economically setting up almost three decades of unparalleled growth, and institutional reform. The state’s Democratic Party was one of the most corrupt when Askew became Governor and by 1979 when he left office the state had some of the strictest ethics laws on the books nationally.

In 1982, Northwest Florida Conservative State Senator Tom Tobiassen switched from Republican to Democrat to prevent a district from disappearing in the House he decided to run for. In 1995, W.D. Childers, also from the Pensacola area and a former Democratic Senate President became a Republican because the GOP had captured the chamber. Just three years earlier when Republican leadership failed to back up a moderately conservative Seminole County member Frank Stone in the midst of a local political crisis, he switched parties to become a Democrat. Tobiassen was a conservative (who even talked of secession for NW Florida at times) that fit into a Democratic caucus that at the time was full of conservatives from rural areas. At the time the GOP held very rural seats in either chamber, essentially being reduced to suburban areas around the state.

In the late 1990s a number of Democratic House members switched parties to become Republicans after the GOP captured the chamber in 1996. In total, seven Democrats elected to the State House in the 1996 election when the GOP took a 61-59 edge in the lower chamber defected to the GOP before the start of the 2000 session. While some that switched parties had hardly voted with Democrats even when in the majority, others were simply doing it to obtain a committee chairmanship or enhance election prospects. As someone who worked in the process as a Democrat at the time it was a psychologically draining experience to go through all these party switches in rapid succession.

However, NONE of the 1997-1999 party switches were of liberal Democrats who voted a strongly partisan or ideological line. Rivas Logan is the first recent legislator to have had a down the line voting record for one party that switched to the other quickly. But Rivas Logan, like a lot of the Democrats who flipped a decade and a half ago comes from an area of the state where political winds are changing rapidly. Miami-Dade is the only large county in the state where Barack Obama ran significantly better in 2012 than in 2008. For an ambitious politician like Rivas Logan getting out ahead of a possible collapse in the GOP hegemony in local legislative districts was probably the calculus.

The Democratic National Chairwoman Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the following about the switch.

“Her story is a powerful testament to just how far right the GOP has drifted and how many communities it has alienated — especially women and Hispanics.” “Republicans promised to change their ways following the 2012 election, but instead have doubled down on the same far right policies that drive away voters and public servants like Ana. And particularly in Florida — where, again and again, Republican leaders have taken a hard line against the state’s most underserved people purely for political gain — we are proud that Ana is standing up to say, enough is enough.”

Based on that statement Rivas Logan should be embraced by all Democrats. But the sentiments in Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s comments don’t reflect the reality of Rivas Logan’s record. I’d like to know where she stands on a multitude of issues and why she flipped to being a Democrat beyond personal ambition and preservation. I am sure others want to know as well.