Australian physical therapist Mick Bates’ remarkable career as party-switching American politician

Mick Bates is not a household name in Australia but the Queenslander has left his mark in US politics. See why.

Exclusive: On paper, Mick Bates looks like a Republican politician straight out of central casting.

The West Virginian state representative is a small-business owner who believes in lower taxes, gun rights and abortion restrictions.

In reality, however, Bates was a Democrat until 18 months ago. And while he proudly calls the mining town of Beckley home, his accent betrays the fact that he is actually an Australian.

Next month’s US midterm elections will mark the end of Bates’s eight-year stint in the West Virginia state legislature – something he never imagined when he arrived for a gap year 30 years ago.

West Virginian state representative Mick Bates. Picture: Supplied

Born in Broken Hill, he grew up in Queensland and Western Australia, before moving to the US to work as a locum physical therapist. Then he met his wife-to-be Pam, and they landed in Beckley.

“That was supposed to be six weeks and it’s now almost 30 years,” Bates said.

“I didn’t know anything about West Virginia before I came here … We just fell into the community. They adopted us and we adopted them.”

He said he found West Virginians a lot like Australians – hardworking, family-oriented people who loved the outdoors and didn’t take themselves too seriously.

But he could see problems in his new community, so in 2008 he stood for public office.

“I got my a**e kicked – I had no idea what I was doing,” Bates laughed.

“I didn’t know a Democrat from a Republican back then.”

Six years later, Bates succeeded in getting elected to West Virginia’s House of Delegates as a Democrat, despite his incumbent opponent erecting billboards with a picture of a kangaroo and himself, and a slogan that said: “One of these are native to West Virginia.”

A billboard targeting Mick Bates in the 2014 election he won. Picture: Supplied

“I was certainly an oddity and people weren’t quite sure how to take me,” Bates said.

“That works both ways. It helps you to establish an identity and get to know people, but there’s also a little bit of suspicion and a sense that you’re an outsider.”

Looking back, the 52-year-old said the kangaroo billboard was “pretty damn tame”.

“It’s a different world now. Back then, it was not as polarised and nasty as it is now,” he said.

Bates would know. Last year, he defected to the Republican party, arguing the Democrats had “largely become irrelevant” in what had been a stronghold state, and that he wanted to “be on the winning team” as a self-described “moderate conservative”.

“At the same time as the Democratic party nationally has run to the left, the Republican party nationally has been driven to the right, and folks that are like me are put in a position where you’ve got to pick a side,” he said.

Bates sought to challenge Republican Rollan Roberts for his state Senate seat, launching a campaign in which he wielded a rifle, promised he was “100 per cent pro-life” and declared he was “the only proven conservative” in the race.

Roberts responded with a gruesome ad about Bates’s voting record on abortion, depicting him holding a scalpel with his hands covered in blood.

“They called me a Democrat, they called me a baby killer, they called me a gun grabber,” Bates said.

“That’s what’s happened to American politics over the course of eight years.”

In a scathing editorial, the local newspaper said both Roberts and Bates “should be ashamed” of a campaign in which they used “every below-the-belt and mud-slinging strategy that makes us absolutely abhor politics”.

Bates, for his part, said he was merely defending himself. But with Roberts spending about $470,000 on his campaign, triple what Bates raised, he won the bitter preselection fight.

It means Bates will bow out of politics at next month’s elections, ending what he said was “the most difficult and rewarding and frustrating thing I ever did”.

An ad targeting Mick Bates in a Republican primary race this year. Picture: Supplied

Unlike in Australia, he said social issues like abortion and gun rights remained so divisive in the US because of the historical context, as well as the “tribal” differences forged by an electoral system without compulsory voting.

“It’s a really nasty time to be involved,” Bates said.

“It’s not easy on those that care about you … But it’s just the way the game is played now.”

“If you approached me today and asked me to run for office, I might have to rethink the whole thing. But I’m not done yet.”

Originally published as Australian physical therapist Mick Bates’ remarkable career as party-switching American politician