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Jim Huffman ran as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010 against incumbent U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), but six years later he's left the party over its presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.
And he's urging others to follow suit.
"A growing number of Republicans are declaring that they will not vote for their party's nominee, Donald Trump," he writes in an opinion piece for the Daily Caller. "They and other Republicans should take one more step—they should abandon the Republican Party, at least until it once again warrants their support."
A former dean of Lewis & Clark Law School, Huffman cites party leaders and elected officials' embrace of Trump as reason for changing his party registration to "unaffiliated" and his decision to vote for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson.
"The leader of the Republican Party in my state of Oregon, Bill Currier, contends that the party has 'strayed from its mission' if it does not give undivided support to the nominee," Huffman writes. "But the mission of the party cannot be to go down with an irreparably flawed, sinking ship."
Huffman also criticizes Trump's "indiscriminate and unacceptable derision of other human beings and his ignorance of the core principles of American constitutionalism."
"I cannot in good conscience support a candidate who has continually demonstrated himself to be devoid of good judgment and human decency," he writes.
Willamette Week