A political migration has begun within the Republican Party, wrote former U.S. senator and representative Jeff Flake in a Washington Post column that published Thursday.
The political climate that “once rewarded absolute loyalty to the president” is shifting, wrote Flake, the chair of World Trade Center Utah who served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2022 to 2024. The significant Democratic wins in Tuesday’s off-year elections “will only add momentum to that,” he added.
Flake, a BYU alumnus, said this migration “won’t be a stampede,” but instead will unfold “vote by vote, district by district.”
“Some will move out of conviction, others out of political necessity. Motives will vary, but the movement is happening,” he wrote.
“And in the end, after enough of the herd has made the journey, the GOP will look up and find itself in a new, old place — one rooted in optimism, free trade and the conviction that America leads best when it engages rather than retreats,” he wrote in the op-ed titled, “The great GOP migration has begun.”
In 2000, Flake won a seat as a Republican representing Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives and served six consecutive terms before heading to the upper house as an Arizona senator, where he served a six-year term from 2013 to 2019. While a senator, Flake served as chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology & the Law as well as chairing the Africa Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Prior to entering Congress, Flake served as executive director of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. He also directed the Foundation for Democracy in Namibia during that nation’s transition to independence. While at BYU, Flake earned degrees in international relations and political science.