Posted on 06/10/2003 10:18:02 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Lifelong Democrat announcing her run for state auditor
A lifelong Democrat and former deputy state auditor planned to switch party affiliation today and take on her former boss for the elected position of state auditor.
Lisa Thornburg, former deputy state auditor and lifelong Democrat, planned to say this morning that she changed party affiliation because the state needs a change, according to a copy of her speech provided to the Daily Mail.
So why not just take on current auditor and Democrat Glen Gainer?
Thornburg said she has found herself voting Republican more and more in the past years.
"I finally realized that sometimes when you have a problem you have to step outside of it in order to fix it," her speech reads. "Otherwise, you just continue to be part of the problem."
It may also be easier for Thornburg, a Marshall graduate who lives in Milton, to run as a Republican rather than a Democrat.
GOP Chairman Kris Warner said the Republican Party is more open than his Democratic counterparts. There are not many Republicans lining up to run, and unlike Democrats, they are not putting in years of political service hoping for an opening or waiting for someone to die, Warner said.
She's also very qualified for the position, Warner said, since she has so many years of service in the auditor's office.
"It makes it real easy to embrace Lisa and people like her," Warner said.
The Republicans scheduled a press conference for 10:30 this morning to announce Thornburg's position.
Thornburg wrote in her speech that she's urging all her "friends in the Democratic Party who are actually closet Republicans" to join the "new West Virginia Republican Party."
"There is finally a choice!" she said.
Thornburg said she wants to go "beyond the Enron by the books audit" and respond to citizen complaints in the auditor's office.
She also threw in a not-so-veiled reference to Gov. Bob Wise's admitted affair.
"After the headlines of last month, government accountability will become even more of an issue," she wrote. "I have found that fraud and embezzlement seem to decrease when people know that someone is watching what they are doing. That is the role of a real state auditor."
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