Former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia said she would vote for Vice President Harris in Sunday’s presidential election, becoming the latest former Republican lawmaker to defect from her party’s support to former President Trump.
“After January 6th, Donald Trump has refused to concede defeat and has undermined our democracy for four years, and I think that’s time to change,” Comstock said in an interview with CNN on Sunday. “So I’m going to be voting for the vice president.”
This comes just weeks after Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, endorsed Harris for the nomination.
Riggleman’s name was announced among a list of high-profile supporters when the Harris campaign launched its “Republicans Support Harris” campaign earlier this month.
Like Comstock, Riggleman pointed to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Comstock, who represented Virginia’s 10th Congressional District from 2015 to 2019, was one of several Republican defectors who had a tense relationship with Trump during his time in the White House.
She was one of about 20 Republicans who called on Trump to drop out of the 2016 presidential race after audio emerged of him making sexually lewd comments about groping women.
She ultimately lost reelection in 2018, but has been a vocal critic of President Trump in recent years.
Comstock said Sunday that she did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020.
“So this is the most misogynistic list of nominees ever,” she said, pointing to the controversy surrounding Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio).
“This is not something our party should accept. Not only is he a felon, he still has a case where he removed classified documents,” she said, referring to Trump’s ongoing legal battles.
A judge last month dismissed the classified documents lawsuit and dropped 40 criminal charges against Trump for mishandling classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them from Mar-a-Lago.
But he was convicted in New York earlier this year in a hush-money case and still faces two other lawsuits related to attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
