Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan has officially joined the Democratic Party, marking the end of a long and growing estrangement from the GOP. In a candid op-ed published Tuesday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Duncan explained that the shift has been years in the making and rooted in personal conviction as much as politics.
“There’s no date on a calendar or a single moment that sparked the change, but my political heart has shifted,” Duncan wrote. “I’ve struggled daily with what it means to ‘love my neighbor’ while remaining a Republican. That internal conflict finally became too large to ignore.”
While Duncan was already vocal in his opposition to former President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, he noted that his departure from the GOP wasn’t about Trump alone. It was about the broader direction of the party — particularly its positions on health care, poverty, immigration, and gun violence.
He took aim at the long-standing Republican approach to health insurance, which often suggests that employment is the key to coverage. Duncan countered that reality tells a different story in Georgia, where many working families still go without insurance due to low wages or jobs that offer no health benefits. “They have jobs — just the wrong kind,” he said.
He also criticized President Trump’s latest flagship legislation, dubbed the “big, beautiful bill,” which he claimed would gut Medicaid and leave low-income children hungry by slashing food stamp funding. “That’s not loving your neighbor,” he wrote.
Duncan pointed to overwhelming public support for universal background checks and red flag laws as another reason he felt out of step with the modern GOP. On immigration, he rejected the Trump administration’s hardline stance, calling it a “lesson in how not to love your neighbor.” He proposed a more balanced approach: secure the border, deport those with felony convictions, but also provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants who live and work in the U.S.
Duncan’s switch is not without political consequences. The Georgia Republican Party formally expelled him earlier this year after he endorsed then–Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in her support. He had already declined to seek re-election in 2022 and has become increasingly outspoken in criticizing both Trump and the Republican establishment in the years since the January 6 Capitol riot.
Reflecting on his new political identity, Duncan wrote, “The list of reasons I’m now a Democrat continues to grow. But above all, it’s because this gives me the best chance to live out the value that matters most: loving my neighbor.”
He now joins a small but growing group of former Republicans — including ex-Reps. Joe Walsh of Illinois and David Jolly of Florida — who have crossed the aisle in response to what they see as an irreversible shift in the party’s core values.