THE LOTT FALLOUT (continued):

Official switches affiliation: The party of “inclusion” has lost a county official to the other side. (WILLIAM LANEY, January 21, 2003, Wapakoneta Daily News)

Auglaize County Commissioner John Bergman announced that he has left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party in a news release Thursday and delivered to area newspapers Monday. He also announced he would be seeking re-election in 2004.

“I think that they don’t look at the views toward the middle like they used to at the national level,” Bergman said in a phone interview from his Noble Township home Monday afternoon.

Bergman, 48, said he became upset when the Democrats appointed U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, as the House Minority Leader, when they could have looked at more moderate representatives. She was sworn in on Jan. 7.

“It shows me a lack of willingness to come to the center because Mr. (Martin) Frost from Texas, he was in the race from the get-go and he has moderate views, and, of course, Marcy Kaptur, here, from Ohio, who got into the race a little bit later, is much more moderate,” Bergman said. “The party of inclusion has forgot about the moderate and conservative Democrats, and it is supposed to be the party of inclusion.”

Will the last person to leave the Democrat Party please shut off the lights. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 23, 2003 8:30 AM