For nearly two decades, JC Polanco devoted himself to the Republican Party.
He worked to bring Latino voters into the Republican coalition, served as a Republican commissioner at the New York City Board of Elections, and even ran for Public Advocate as a Republican in 2017.
But he was never the kind of Republican that comfortably fit inside today's party.
The son of Dominican immigrants who came to New York after the Dominican Civil War, Polanco grew up surrounded by poverty, crime, and drugs, while believing deeply in the American dream. His father drove a cab, worked as a building superintendent, and sacrificed to send him to the top schools in the neighborhood.
Education, hard work, and opportunity weren't abstract political ideas—they were the story of his family.
“I had the opportunity after my time at Our Lady of Mercy to go to Fordham Prep, which is a very great school. It's a Jesuit school in the Bronx that also gave me an opportunity to attend with a work grant where I got to work part of the tuition off.
My father was able to continue working as a cab driver and a superintendent to help pay the rest. And part of the work grant was I had to get to school at six in the morning. [My father] would drop me off on his night shift, and I got to clean chemistry class equipment daily. I got to work in the library daily, but we got to pay off the tuition. So I had a very hard-working, ethic, hard work ethic immigrant spirit early on in life."
As a young man, Polanco was a Clinton Democrat and an Al Gore supporter. But after becoming a public school teacher in 2000, he found himself increasingly drawn to a different kind of Republicanism.
He admired politicians like Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Michael Bloomberg, and Herman Badillo. They were fiscally conservative, socially moderate, and focused on solving problems rather than performing for ideological audiences. They cared about public safety, educational standards, and economic opportunity.
For Polanco, that felt like home.
"I found a home, and I became a Republican."
Yet even at the height of his involvement, he remained an unusual fit. He was pro-LGBT rights, supportive of legal immigration, and believed deeply in the contributions immigrants make to American life. What attracted him to the Republican Party wasn't culture-war politics. It was competence, preparation, and a belief that government should create opportunities for people willing to work for them.
Then came the rise of Donald Trump.
Like many politically homeless Americans, Polanco describes his break with the party less as a disagreement than a heartbreak. Watching immigrants and Muslims become political targets felt deeply personal to the son of immigrants who had spent his life celebrating America's ability to welcome newcomers.
"It really shattered me."
As a professor, J.C. Polanco encourages students to engage with competing ideas, challenge assumptions, and wrestle with complexity. He rejects the simplistic framing of history as a battle between permanent oppressors and permanent victims.
What troubled him most was not simply Trump's rhetoric, but the way the Republican Party increasingly revolved around a single individual.
"If you don't agree with this one individual, you're gonna feel the wrath."
The party he had joined no longer seemed interested in debate, disagreement, or independent thinking. There was no room for the kind of moderate Republicanism that had drawn him there in the first place.
After two decades, he walked away.
Are you a lifelong Democrat or Republican who suddenly feels like you don’t recognize your own party? Let’s talk.
Yet Polanco's political homelessness didn't end when he left the Republican Party. If anything, it deepened.
Today, as a history professor, attorney, and lifelong student of American politics, he finds himself alarmed by what he sees happening inside the Democratic Party.
Watching the rise of Zohran Mamdani, Polanco experienced an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.
Many observers focus on the ideological differences between Mamdani and Trump. Polanco sees something else: two charismatic figures who built intensely loyal movements around themselves. He points to Democrats facing primary challenges after refusing to endorse Mamdani and compares it to Republicans who were ostracized for criticizing Trump.
"There is now the MAGA-fication of the Democratic Party."
For Polanco, the comparison isn't really about ideology. It's about behavior.
As someone who has spent years teaching leadership, law, and public policy, he struggles to understand how an assemblyman with three sponsored bills, no leadership position, and no executive experience became the frontrunner to run a city of more than eight million people.
"How did he get the job? On what planet do you endorse that?"
What alarms him even more is the pressure he sees placed on Democrats who refuse to fall in line. He points to elected officials who have faced backlash—or even primary challenges—after declining to endorse Mamdani early, regardless of their Democratic credentials. To him, it mirrors what happened inside the Republican Party under Trump.
For a student of history, the danger isn't any particular policy position. It's the erosion of a culture where disagreement is tolerated.
"It's no longer, do you agree with me on this issue? It's, are you following this person?"
The dynamic has become personal. Despite being a lifelong Bronxite, the son of immigrants, and a Latino educator who has spent decades serving New York communities, Polanco says he is regularly called a "colonizer" online by Mamdani loyalists, simply because he opposes the candidate's policies.
And the pressure isn't limited to social media.
During our interview in a public park, a white woman sitting nearby overheard part of our conversation about Mamdani. Though Polanco wasn't raising his voice, she interrupted to ask him to lower it. The exchange was brief and harmless, but it struck me as an illustration of the very phenomenon he was describing.
If you have anything negative to say about Mamdani, you’d better lower your voice.
He sees the consequences everywhere.
"If you disagree with someone who identifies as MAGA on something, you're an evil person, you're not patriotic. If you disagree with someone who's DSA, you're an evil person, you don't care, you're an oppressor."
That mindset runs directly against everything Polanco teaches.
As a professor, he encourages students to engage with competing ideas, challenge assumptions, and wrestle with complexity. He rejects the simplistic framing of history as a battle between permanent oppressors and permanent victims.
"History has beauty and has ugly. It's all encompassing. It's the bad, it's the good, it's the ugliest, the wonderful, it's the hope, it's the everything."
Polanco’s patriotism is rooted in that same understanding. He speaks passionately about the sacrifices of Black Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and countless immigrant communities who helped expand opportunity and make the country more just. As J.C. Polanco explains, America's story is neither flawless nor irredeemable. It is complicated, imperfect, and worth defending.
That perspective also shapes how he thinks about Israel. Polanco sees the Jewish state through the lens of democracy, history, and national security.
"I think Israel is important to me as a Latino, because I understand that they are a democracy in an area of the world where my country, the United States, has been directly impacted by terrorism."
He worries that support for Israel has increasingly become a partisan issue when it should be viewed as part of a broader alliance between democratic societies.
"I think that the Israel and American relationship politically is well above partisanship."
Polanco and I also discussed the growing willingness of political movements to embrace extremists. He is troubled by politicians and activists who excuse antisemitism, use coded language, or treat Jews differently than other minority groups.
"When you hear these Democrats say, ‘He's been bought by AIPAC’... what they're saying is that he is pro-Jew."
For Polanco, these developments are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a broader problem.
Whether it comes from the far right or the far left, he sees the same temptation toward ideological purity, tribalism, and moral certainty. The same instinct to divide people into heroes and villains. The same pressure to conform.
And increasingly, he sees social media accelerating all of it.
"People are being elected based upon how loud you are on social media."
Today, Polanco considers himself an independent. He still believes in law and order. He still believes in civil rights. He still believes in economic opportunity, strong schools, and the American dream.
For the son of immigrants who spent years searching for a political home, the answer isn't choosing between left and right.
It's rejecting the cult of personality altogether.
Because if history has taught him anything, it's that democracies are strongest when people are free to disagree—and weakest when loyalty to a person becomes more important than loyalty to principles.