(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Former Democrat operative Evan Barker, who raised roughly $50 million in funds for Democrats throughout her career, recently revealed why she broke from the party and cast her ballot for Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
Barker admitted she was “one of those people who laid [sic] in bed for three days” when Trump defeated Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. However, she explained Democrats losing touch with their constituents prompted her to cross the aisle.
“On Tuesday, I voted for Donald Trump,” she said in an article published Saturday for the Free Press.
“It felt like the biggest middle finger I’ve ever raised to the party I’d supported for most of my adult life,” she added. “When he won, I was utterly euphoric.”
Barker said uber-wealthy talk-show host Oprah Winfrey’s “tone-deaf speech” stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris was what pushed her over the edge to support Trump.
“A larger than life Hollywood billionaire so far removed from the experience of average Americans—indeed, from her own experience growing up poor in rural Mississippi—her presence was dumbfounding to me,” Barker wrote. “She said nothing that spoke to the Americans who had once constituted the Democratic base.”
Winfrey reportedly even charged Harris’s campaign $1 million for the handful of appearances she made with the candidate.
While finishing high school, Barker worked as an intern on former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign at age 17. She then served as a field organizer for Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 campaign, later becoming a consultant for several Democrat U.S. House and Senate campaigns and Soros-backed district attorney races by age 26.
Barker does not consider herself a Democrat anymore, but she would not say she is a Republican. She said she has “no regrets” for her vote, despite losing friends and facing social challenges.
“I could scarcely believe I was cheering with the crowd as each swing state turned red,” she wrote. “But I was, and I felt the same sense of elation I felt when Obama won in 2008.”
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
