Former Democratic Congressman and Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright announced Thursday that he was mounting a campaign to reclaim his old seat from Rep. Martha Roby, R-Montgomery, as a Republican.

Bright was mayor of the Alabama capital from 1999 to 2009, when he won Alabama's Second Congressional District as a Democrat. He lost reelection to Roby amid the Tea Party wave in 2010.

The one-term congressman downplayed his switching parties, pointing out that at one point Gov. Kay Ivey, Sen. Richard Shelby and even President Donald Trump were Democrats. Bright said the GOP more closely aligns with his values.

"I tried to be a Democrat, and I didn't do the job as a Democrat that I wanted to do, mainly because my beliefs are conservative and that held me back," he told reporters in Hoover, where he submitted his qualification papers to run as a Republican. "You have to look at where I came from when I chose to run as a Democrat. I was a non-partisan mayor for 10 years, so I worked to make things happen and to be successful across party lines. I felt at the time I could go on to Washington as a Democrat and be very, very effective and we did - we were very effective to a great degree. But there's limited things you can do up there as a conservative controlled by a liberal party."

Bright was a Blue Dog Democrat, a caucus of the party's most conservative members. He voted against Obamacare.

The attempt to win back his own seat was spurred by people in the district, which spans from most of Montgomery to the Wiregrass Region, asking for change, according to Bright.

"I am answering their call," he said of his former constituents. "They've asked me to consider stepping back into the political arena and represent their interest, and that's what I intend to do."

Bright claimed that residents in the district are not being "properly represented" because Roby does not currently sit on the Armed Services or Agriculture committees and the district has a sizeable military presence and a robust farming community.

"We have two military bases, we have many, many farmers ... they have no voice, they have no direct voice to Washington, D.C.," he said.

Last year, Roby told AL.com that her seat on the House Appropriations Committee gives her a platform "to fight for our military men and women" by securing funding.

"Representative Roby is focused on doing the job that the people of Alabama's Second District sent her to Washington to do, and she looks forward to discussing her clear conservative Republican record on the campaign trail," a spokeswoman for Roby's campaign said in an email statement Thursday.

The National Republican Congressional Committee -- the campaign arm of House Republicans -- slammed Bright for his vote to elect Nancy Pelosi speaker. The committee is backing Roby in the primary.

"A candidate running as a Republican in Alabama who voted for Nancy Pelosi is definitely the most shocking news of the day - even in 2018," NRCC regional spokeswoman Maddie Anderson said in an email to AL.com. "Nancy Pelosi is the most unpopular political figure in the entire country and I look forward to watching Bobby Bright explain to Alabamians how exactly he supports both Pelosi and the tax-cutting GOP agenda."

As of Thursday, there were two other Republican challengers for the seat: Roy Moore aide Rich Hobson and state Rep. Barry Moore, R-Enterprise.