Although fewer Tea Party activists took to the streets this tax season, the movement is growing and stronger than ever, supporters say.
In April 2010, tax-day Tea Partiers organized more than 50 rallies across the state to protest high taxes, wasteful spending, and big government. They vowed to throw out any politician who ignored them and, later that year, they helped elect the first Republican majority in the North Carolina House and Senate in more than a century. In April 2011, tax-day tea parties took place in only about a dozen North Carolina cities and fewer attended them.
But Tea Party leaders aren’t worried. While the movement may be less visible this year, it is burgeoning behind the scenes, they say. Instead of yelling and waving signs in the streets, Tea Party activists are sitting in their home offices calling, faxing, and emailing their representatives. They are organizing and planning strategies, watching and waiting, ready to pounce on any politician who goes wobbly, and taking notes for the 2012 election. They get together for Saturday seminars and monthly dinners. They keep in close contact through email, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.
After the 2010 elections were over, Tea Party leader Donna Yowell “wanted something else to do,” so she founded a group called Feet to the Fire to hold candidates accountable she had helped win office. The list of people who subscribe to her email “blasts” has grown from 600 to 3,000 in just four months, she said.
“Just because we’re not out there holding a sign does not mean we’re not participating in government,” Yowell said. “We are not yellers and screamers. We are thought-provoking people, people of higher education.”
Mark Hager, state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, said the number of Tea Party Patriot groups in North Carolina has grown from 83 to 86 in the last month alone.
“Instead of going out in the streets and yelling and holding up signs for everyone to see once again, we’re now working inside — becoming delegates to conventions, becoming precinct chairs and co-chairs, and we’re having to work,” Hager said. “That’s the hard work. It’s easier to go out in the street and yell and wave a sign.”
And from what he says, it’s making an impact. Hager’s local Tea Party group in the Yadkin Valley met at length with state Sen. Andrew Brock, R-Davie, before the 2011 session. He said Brock listened to their concerns and adjusted to their expectations. He had to, Hager said, “because we’re three times the average voting bloc in North Carolina.”
Diane Ruffino, a leader in the Eastern North Carolina Tea Party, said Tea Party folks traditionally are the ones least able to get out and protest, especially during the week.
“They are the people that still believe in personal responsibility,” Ruffino said. “They work, take care of their families, raise productive children, educate their children, baby-sit their grandchildren, volunteer with their churches, and are investing in an education. Come the weekend, they are exhausted.”
Any spare time tea parties have they spend attending courses on the Constitution, contacting their representatives, or writing letters to the editor, she said. Tea Party leaders now are focusing their energy on education rather than rallies, “which tend to preach to the choir,” she said.
In response to claims from the left that the Tea Party has disappeared as a result of their “success” in the 2010 election, former Libertarian Party U.S. Senate candidate Mike Beitler said, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Beitler was one of several speakers at this year’s tax-day Tea Party in Greensboro. He congratulated the crowd for putting a Republican majority in the North Carolina General Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 and then announced his goals for 2012.
“Next, we need to take back the U.S. Senate, the White House, and we need to throw Bev Perdue out of the governor’s mansion,” he said.
At a tax-day Tea Party in Morganton, North Carolina Campaign for Liberty Director Adam Love gave his audience pointers on how future electoral victories could be accomplished.
The key to success, Love said, is to pay attention and to make politicians pay for ignoring the will of the majority.
“Every session of the legislature you must return pushing for your principles,” he said, “and every election you must cause pain to as many politicians as possible, starting with those who claim to support your cause but who vote and act in opposition.
“Rome was not built in a day and major policy is not passed overnight,” Love added. “It may take years or a decade or more. Policy is changed one vote and one politician at a time.”
At a tax-day rally outside the Capitol building in Raleigh, freshman state Rep. Glen Bradley, R-Franklin, gave the Tea Party further encouragement.
“Do not be dismayed that we are but few in number compared to the establishment who maintain business as usual,” Bradley said. “Remember that the American Revolution was won by only 3 percent. It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.