A veteran Republican state representative is calling it quits, and it’s all President Donald Trump’s fault.
Ed Clere, who has served in Indiana’s House of Representatives for 18 years, told News and Tribune on Friday that he would not seek reelection, saying that the political environment in the state’s General Assembly has become “dysfunctional and toxic.”
“There are many good Republicans, but the Republican Party has lost its way, and I can no longer be a part of it,” Clere, 51, told the southern Indiana newspaper.
Clere hasn’t always seen eye to eye with his GOP contemporaries.
In December, Clere was one of a dozen Indiana House Republicans who shot down Trump and JD Vance’s attempt to gerrymander the state’s congressional maps to favor Republicans before this year’s midterm elections, which resulted in him receiving a bomb threat to his home on Dec. 10.
“I’ve always tried to voice and vote my conscience, and at times it has put me at odds with other Republicans at the Statehouse,” Clere told News and Tribune. “I think the redistricting debacle last year is an example of toxic Washington politics making their way into Indiana.”
He has also strayed from Republican sensibilities on issues like Medicaid expansion, transgender rights, gay marriage, and abortion.
“You’ve heard that saying before: ‘I didn’t leave the party. The party left me,’” Clere told IndyStar on Saturday. “That’s how I feel.”
“Under Trump, it has become unrecognizable,” he said. “We’ve seen the very divisive and dysfunctional politics of Washington make their way into Indiana.”
Clere said he will be running for the mayor of New Albany, Indiana, in next year’s municipal elections as an independent. He ran for the position in 2023 as a Republican but lost to Democratic incumbent Jeff Gahan.
“As an independent, I won’t have to consider party politics,” he said. “My only consideration will be what’s right for the people of New Albany.”
Clere isn’t the only Republican to ditch their job during the second Trump administration.
Former MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from her post as a Georgia congresswoman on Jan. 5, after breaking from the administration over the release of the Epstein files.
Several other Republican lawmakers have announced they will not be seeking reelection, including North Carolina Rep. Thom Tillis, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst.
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