By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

Dade County Commissioner Lamar Lowery, whose District 1 seat is up for grabs in November’s election, says he is still not 100 percent sure he will switch parties and seek reelection as a Republican.  “It’s not written in stone yet,” he said.

Lowery, who has held the seat since 2005, said the change makes sense given his values. “I have got the most conservative voting record on the Dade County Commission, there’s no doubt,” he said. “Senator Mullis and Martin Scott both have been after me for years to swap parties.”

Why now? Dade’s local Democratic honchos got Lowery’s hackles up recently when they elected officers at the county library behind locked doors, he recounted, leaving him pounding in vain to get in. “I took offense at that,” he said. 

Locked out by the Democrats, Lowery instead attended the “tea party”-style rally going on in the Administrative Building the same evening, a stroll across the square that may well turn out to be a symbolic one.

But mostly, says Lowery, he is considering the switch to make a statement about national politics in general – “I feel like my party’s going further and further to the left instead of staying in the mainstream” –  and President Obama in particular:  “I think he’s overriding the people’s will right now.”

Lowery is aware that he has constituents who won’t vote for anyone but a Democrat but hopes that he’ll gain enough Republicans to make up for the yellow dogs. “I’ll lose a few, pick up a few,” he said. “I think we’ve got mostly independent voters in this county.”

Finally, Lowery said one reason that the party change is not a done deal yet is that he is by no means certain his attraction to the right is a mutual one. “There have been rumors that some of the Republicans in the party don’t want me in there,” he told the Sentinel.

But Lowery said he’s not concerned about the prospect of another party locking its doors against him.  National politics is largely about fighting back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, he said, but at the local level a candidate should be able to run on his record. His question to constituents, he said, was:  “Are you going to vote for the person or are you going to vote for the party?”