“I have come to realize a majority of Republicans, both locally and in the NH House, hold values which no longer reflect traditional Republican values. And so I am recognizing the reality that today’s Republican Party is no longer the party I first joined when campaigning for President Reagan many years ago,” Marsh wrote in a press release.

He said he had been content to ride out the rest of his term without attracting any attention until state Republican leaders held a rally Tuesday in opposition to President Biden’s vaccine mandates for federal and private sector workers.

At the rally, interrupted by anti-vaccine protesters who criticized Republicans for not taking more drastic action against the Biden administration, state House Speaker Sherman Packard (R) on Tuesday called Biden’s vaccine mandates “madness.” Packard assumed his current position in January, after his predecessor died of the coronavirus.