Produced by HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit
Leaders of the Tea Party movement are throwing their weight behind Republican Scott Brown's campaign for Ted Kennedy's vacated Senate seat. This is a significant departure from the movement's strategy thus far, which has been to nurture ultra-conservative third-party candidates. This time around the movement hopes to support a Republican victory, then claim Brown as a Tea Party Candidate.
Brown, a moderate, is running against Democrat Martha Coakley, and while Massachusetts is a heavily Democratic state, a new Rasmussen poll found Brown trailing Coakley by only nine points, 50 percent to 41 percent, with seven percent undecided.
"In fact," says the report, "among those who are absolutely certain they will vote, Brown pulls to within two points of Coakley."
The election is January 19th.
Spearheading this drive to support Brown are the people at TaxDayTeaParty.com, the group working with FreedomWorks to organize the April 15 Tax Day Tea Party in Washington, DC. TaxDayTeaParty.com is a pet project of Eric Odom, Executive Director of American Liberty Alliance (ALA), which both collaborates with and sponsors other Tea Party organizations, from the Tea Party Express bus tours to April's Patriot Caucus to the National Tea Party Convention. Odom hopes his perceived authority will be enough to direct the Tea Party movement into Brown's camp, and that victory would kill health care reform. He is calling for the movement to "throw all of [its] resources behind Brown" as they did for a Tea Party candidate's failed run for New York's 23rd Congressional District in November.
In a Jan 6 post on the Tax Day site, Odom calls the Massachussetts election "New York 23 all over, only better." He asks members to support Brown and "Take Back Boston!"
Odom justifies this move by pointing out this is only a two party race, with "no way to split the vote three ways." In other words, no pesky Tea Party candidate. He also claims that TaxDayTeaParty.com is gathering "a full crew of bloggers, campaign volunteers and poll watchers to travel to the district next week." Naturally the email also solicits funds for TaxDayTeaParty.com; as Odom puts it, "We need to raise some quick money to mount our campaign and go help Brown in this race." (To be fair, the very bottom of the email has a link to the main page Brown campaign website, should one wish to "donate/volunteer directly.")
The race for New York's 23rd Congressional district is an odd rallying cry, as the results were devastating for conservatives. Moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, initially supported by the GOP, was viciously hounded by Tea Party activists and their proposed candidate, Doug Hoffman, who claimed Scozzafava wasn't Republican enough. Michelle Malkin called Scozzafava a "radical leftist." Hoffman received support from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and, towards the end of the race, even the GOP itself, which began to distance themselves from Scozzafava.
The race became so contentious that Scozzafava suspended her campaign at the last moment and threw her support behind her Democratic opponent, Bill Owens, who went on to win the election. Some parts of NY-23 had not been represented by a Democrat since 1856 -- Franklin County in particular elected a Whig more recently than any Democrat.
The terrific defeat in New York 23 (for both the Republicans and the Tea Party movement) was so momentous as to coin a new verb: to Scozzafava; to run an ultra-conservative candidate against a moderate Republican in such a way as to split the vote and allow the Democrat to win.
Eight days later, on November 10, Odom posted on his blog that it was time for the Tea Party to "take over the GOP," by which he meant join it.
"Love or hate the Republican Party... it's our only vessel in the short term. We either unify through it and make a stand strong enough to stop this madness in government, or we fracture over third party efforts and meet uncertain political demise."
On January 5 Tea Party Express announced its support for Brown. This series of bus tours organized by Our Country Deserves Better PAC, has been called astroturf by other Tea Party groups including the American Liberty Alliance and members of Tea Party Patriots, a group generally considered to represent the movement's grass-roots.
The Republican Party itself, while providing a modicum of support, is keeping its distance from Brown's campaign. According to the Boston Herald, "operatives say the national GOP and the NRSC have donated voter lists, telephone systems and at least $50,000 to Brown's effort."
This is a paltry sum compared to the "hundreds of thousands" given by the GOP to Mitt Romney's 1994 campaign for the same seat. Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics,suggests in the Herald article that the Republicans are focusing on November elections they think they can win, and will not "go on any kamikaze missions." Perhaps the Tea Party will.
Follow Alex Brant-Zawadzki on Twitter: www.twitter.com/beezling
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And remember the laughing you did about NY23? It never occurs to this mindset that "average" people can figure out a mistake and not make it twice. I'll gladly trade on House seat to the Democrats whole already have a majority to breaking the hold in the Senate where 60 is required. Not quite laughing so hard no are you. I welcome your insults because it shows genuine fear of the movement.
Signed,
A stupid, teabagging, racist, redneck Southernor who don't get politikin' at all.
http://my.barackobama.com/CoakleyN2N
Sign up and make some calls on Martha Coakley's behalf. I did, and I spoke to some of the nicest people. I got through to over 40 people, and all but a few were voting for Martha (including two people who were rounding up their whole family to vote for her). BTW: the few who weren't voting for Martha Coakley were undecided!
It's really an inspiring feeling to pick up the phone and dial a voter's number on the other side of the country (I'm in Los Angeles) and hear them say, "Oh, yes, we're all supporting Martha, don't you worry."
Make some calls for Martha right now!
http://my.barackobama.com/CoakleyN2N
Remember: anything worth having is worth fighting for and "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality."
Alabama? Inevitable.
Texas? A foregone conclusion.
Having said that, I refuse to believe that - given all that the GOP has done to this once-great nation in the past decade - the good people of Massachusetts would be stupid enough to send a Republican to Washington at this point in our history.
I'm sorry but I just refuse to believe it.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
And the last time they supported a third-party candidate it didn't go so well.
And by "steal Kennedy's seat" I mean "snag the senate seat recently vacated by Ted Kennedy"
Even if the tea party mobilizes to support a Repbulican canididate, the people of Massachusetts will elect a candidate for the Massachusetts Senate seat. There is no Senate seat owned by Ted Kennedy or any other Kennedy. Our forefathers expressly forbade any hereditary titles in this country.
VOTE 4 SCOTT BROWN!
No, I'm sorry, they're actually hoping to unscrew the seat at Kennedy's old Senatorial desk. They're going to hide it away like the English did with the Scots' Stone of Scone
The seat will not be "stolen" people vote for who they want and more than expected wanted Scott Brown before the rest of the country looked at the race.
We would not be having to change laws back and forth pertaining to open senate seats if the Dems in control of MA. weren't so corrupt. If Ted had cared about the people of MA. he would have resigned last year and we would have had a more normal election process, not this rushed one now. If Coakley loses you can thank Ted, Deval and Coakley herself. What a lack luster campain she has run.
Scott Brown kicked butt in the debate tonight!