any way because of the help of my republican counterparts. i'm appreciative of them as well as my community. >> there have been issues in terms of police funding and prosecutorial issues. i know you've been at odds with many democrats in the general assembly. one of the questions is, if you feel like the democratic party was not supportive of you and your colleagues, why choose to go republican as opposed to, say, independent? i understand as recently as last year, you said you would never switch parties. what changed to go republican rather than independent? >> in georgia, it's not really easy to be an independent. at the last election, i got about 19,000, 20,000 votes. to be independent, you have to get thousands of signatures for, to even be on the ballot. so it is really impractical to be an independent in georgia.