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Jason Thigpen, who is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Walter Jones in the 3rd Congressional District, wrote a blistering assessment of his former party, saying his shift was precipitated by the tea party push for a government shutdown.

“I simply cannot stand with a party where its most extreme element promote hate and division amongst people,” Thigpen said in a statement posted to his campaign website Thursday. “Nothing about my platform has, nor will it change. The government shutdown was simply the straw that broke the camels back. I guess being an American just isn’t good enough anymore and I refuse to be part of an extremist movement in the GOP that only appears to thrive on fear and hate mongering of anyone and everyone who doesn’t walk their line.”

Thigpen is a six-year Army veteran who received a Purple Heart, according to his website. He graduated from UNC-Wilmington in May and started a nonprofit group called Student Veterans Advocacy Group. The 36-year-old lives in Holly Ridge with his wife and four children.

His statement is not the first time he’s bucked the Republican Party. Earlier this year, he earned a headline in the Fayetteville Observer for calling the GOP-drafted law to require a voter ID at the polls discriminatory and saying it would suppress the right to vote. At the time, he described himself as a “true Republican.”

"You can paint a turd and sell it as art, but it's still a turd,” he said at the time.

Thigpen again took aim at the GOP legislature in his party-switching announcement. “I didn’t go to war to defend the liberties and freedoms of one party, race, sex, or one income class of Americans,” he said. “So, to come home from serving our country and see North Carolina legislators using their super-majority status to gerrymander districts and pass a law to deliberately suppress and oppress the voting rights of Democrats but more specifically minorities and college students, is absolutely deplorable.

“This same group of spineless legislators piggybacked a motorcycle safety bill with legislation intentionally geared to shut down women’s health clinics because of their ‘right righteous’ beliefs on abortion, while then cutting funding to the programs which help feed and provide healthcare to the babies they invariably forced the same women to have. Sounds like the Christian thing to do, huh?” http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/10/31/3329326/gop-extremist-movement-
prompts.html#storylink=cpy

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For Democrats, who hosted the 2012 presidential convention in North Carolina, there is a bright silver lining. Unstoppable forces are pushing the state from red to one that's trending blue. There is a growing backlash against Republican policies by independents, according to J. Michael Bitzer, an associate professor of politics and history at Catawba College in North Carolina that will push undecided voters toward Democrats.

“Moderate independents have seen the swing to the right as outside of the norm of a moderate North Carolina,” he said Thursday. More importantly, demographic changes across the Tar Heel state are radically remaking the electorate. Hispanics and job seekers are flocking to urban centers like Charlotte and the Research Triangle, creating a large Democratic voting base.

On the national level, North Carolina is transforming from reliably red to decidedly purple - perhaps even a bit blue. North Carolina has long been known for its pragmatic politics; no one party has controlled the government for more than 100 years. According to Bitzer, this changed in 2008 when Obama won the state.

"No body had expected it. It was a massive ground game operation that shook the establishment in North Carolina. The 2010 election was the tea party backlash."

Once Republicans took the state house, they began gerrymandering districts to skew Republican, he said. Republicans "controlled the rules of the game. That meant redistricting."

Bitzer said lawmakers were able to redraw district lines in a way that provides "a protection plan that will cover them for years to come." One problem with this strategy is that it's turning off moderate, independent voters, as well as awakening the state's Democratic base. But Republicans in North Carolina have a larger demographics problem: the number of Democratic voters in urban areas is growing quickly. According to Bitzer, all 13 urban counties in the state broke for Obama in 2012. These areas, like Charlotte and the Research Triangle, are growing quickly by adding jobs in the finance and tech sectors, respectively. In 1980, 1.3 million people lived in the Charlotte area, while only 635,181 lived in the Research Triangle. Now, 2.5 million live in the Charlotte area and 2 million live in the Research Triangle. Both regions are firmly Democratic and are continuing to grow. At the same time, rural areas - the backbone of the Republican voter base - are shrinking. The state's fast-growing Hispanic population is also bad news for Republicans. In 2000, Hispanics, who tend to vote Democratic, only made up 4.71 percent of the N.C. population. They now constitute 8.6 percent – the sixth fastest growth rate in the country - and as the graphic below shows, they are settling around cities. In a state that was decided by 92,000 votes, these population trends are bad news for republicans. Combine that with an army of Democratic get-out-the-vote volunteers from places like Duke University or the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, and you have a recipe for Democratic success at the national level. "We are going to become a more classic swing state because of demographic shifts and the real split in the state between rural and urban interests," Bitzer said. "The redistricting has helped Republicans in the legislature, but when you run statewide, if there are interesting Democrats on top of the ticket, well, it could make for an interesting race." http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/08/16/How-the-NC-GOP-is-Tu
rning-the-Tar-Heel-State-Blue#sthash.de7O23uo.dpuf

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