Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) talks on the phone while standing on a balcony outside the U.S. Capitol March 19, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Former Alabama congressman Artur Davis, once considered a rising star in the Democratic Party and a potential member of Obama’s cabinet, announced this week he is switching parties and becoming a Republican.

Davis, who lost the Democratic primary for governor of Alabama in 2010, had been broadly hinting at this move for months, writing pieces in the conservative National Review and speaking of his frustration with the Democratic Party in public appearances.

He has moved from Alabama to Virginia and is considering a campaign for either state legislature or Congress there.

“I have also not forgotten that in my early thirties, the Democratic Party managed to engineer the last run of robust growth and expanded social mobility that we have enjoyed; and when the party was doing that work, it felt inclusive, vibrant, and open-minded,” he wrote on his personal blog this week.

He added, “But parties change. As I told a reporter last week, this is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party (and he knows that even if he can’t say it).  If you have read this blog, and taken the time to look for a theme in the thousands of words (or free opposition research) contained in it, you see the imperfect musings of a voter who describes growth as a deeper problem than exaggerated inequality; who wants to radically reform the way we educate our children; who despises identity politics and the practice of speaking for groups and not one national interest; who knows that our current course on entitlements will eventually break our solvency and cause us to break promises to our most vulnerable—that is, if we don’t start the hard work of fixing it.”