A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
L.E. BASKOW / PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP PH0TOS
People enjoy a Tea Party rally outside Kurt Schrader’s Town Hall meeting, at the Oak Lodge Library Saturday. Folks from Americans for Prosperity and other groups are protesting the government takeover of the American health care system.
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Democrats dismiss them as cranky right-wingers and nut cases.
Libertarians hail them as new recruits to the cause.
Republicans view them – sometimes warily – as a force to be harnessed to help reenergize the conservative movement.
They’re participants in the local “tea party” movement, a motley mix of new political activists and longtime true believers in limited government.
Some are passionate and unsophisticated, learning politics on the fly. Many are fired up by right-wing talk show hosts. Others are mobilized by national groups with a libertarian, pro-corporate agenda – such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.
Many were spurred to action – or seized a political opening – after the U.S. financial system sputtered in September 2008, and the panicky Bush and Obama administrations responded with an extraordinary series of corporate bailouts and stimulus spending programs. Tea partiers’ angst about the sagging economy, mushrooming budget deficits and government interventions was further stoked by President Obama’s ambitious plans to expand health coverage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite minimal funding and mainstream media attention, the local tea party movement has mobilized thousands of area residents to protests at Pioneer Courthouse Square, Beaverton, Oregon City and elsewhere. The movement captured the media spotlight with last summer’s raucous disruptions of congressional town hall meetings.
Hundreds are now attending monthly chapter meetings of Americans for Prosperity, the Oregon 9-12 Project and other groups nurtured by the tea party upsurge. Many of the local activists filed to run for political office in Oregon’s May 18 primary, several of them for the first time.
Here are some of the key players and issues in the local tea party movement:
Blogger turned
state tea party leader
Geoffrey Ludt was an armchair activist until early last year.
The 37-year-old West Linn resident regularly offered his slant on current events on blogs and Twitter posts – earning enough of a following to be listed among the Top Conservatives on Twitter.
Then Seattle blogger Keli Carender organized the nation’s first tea party protest on Feb. 16, 2009, in Seattle. Three days later, CNBC cable TV commentator Rick Santelli took to the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. In a live broadcast, he ranted against newly inaugurated President Barack Obama’s mortgage bailout proposal and called for a Chicago tea party protest.
Ludt soon joined a conference call with other Top Conservatives on Twitter to plan a national series of protests the following week.
On Feb. 27, Ludt showed up at Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square with a bullhorn and a pitchfork, but no permit. He was escorted off the square – no pitchforks allowed. But Ludt and 100 or more people moseyed across the street to resume their protest on the Pioneer Courthouse steps.
Locally and nationally, the movement went viral, egged-on by conservative radio and TV hosts and bloggers. FreedomWorks and Ameri-cans for Prosperity joined the bandwagon, supplying mon-ey, paid organizers and volunteers.
Ludt put together an Oregon Tea Party Web site and coordinated larger statewide protests on April 15, the federal income tax filing deadline.
Crowd estimates vary widely, but Ludt says 5,000 people showed up at Pioneer Courthouse Square that day, plus hundreds more at 17 other Oregon tea parties.
Ludt, while earning a living in workplace safety and bookkeeping, now serves as the volunteer state coordinator of the Oregon Tea Party. He calls it a “diffuse, leaderless organization” of like-minded individuals and groups, modeled after the “open activism model.”
Under the tea party banner, various groups cooperate to mobilize protests, such as last Saturday’s march outside the town hall of U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, to protest the Democrats’ health insurance bill.
Tea party groups consciously stick to a fiscally conservative message against government bailouts, bulging budget deficits, and government intervention in the economy. Sometimes their demands dovetail conveniently with the agendas of their corporate funders, such as Koch Industries, a conglomerate with close ties to Americans for Prosperity that has extensive oil and gas holdings and a vested interest in opposing limits on carbon emissions.
Tea parties steer clear of social issues – such as abortion and gay marriage – so they can attract a broader following, regardless of party affiliation.
Most tea party-affiliated political candidates in Oregon are running as Republicans, but the relationship to the party is complicated. The GOP is joined at the hip with religious social conservatives, and some of its corporate donors and interest groups “may not be aligned ideologically with the tea party movement,” Ludt says.
“We want the party to be more aligned with us,” he says, rather than bending the tea party movement to fit the GOP. “I’m really ideologically driven,” Ludt says, adding that he “bristles” at the idea of being a loyal party member.
Some of his own views might not be so palatable in the Oregon GOP. In an ideal world, Ludt says, each state would be “sovereign,” with the federal government mainly providing national defense.
The Lake Oswego Rotarian
Until a year ago, Art Scevola’s main community involvement came via the Rotary Club.
Then last March, Scevola and about 60 other people inspired by FOX television talk show host Glenn Beck attended a “meet-up” at Lake Oswego’s Five Spice restaurant. The life insurance agent went on to found the Oregon 9-12 Project, a Beck-inspired group that Scevola says attracts 150 or more members to monthly meetings in Lake Oswego.
Inspiration came from the “economic jihad” waged by President Obama since he took office, Scevola says.
Beck’s project espouses nine principles that he associates with the nation’s Founding Fathers. Those include “America is good,” and “I believe in God and he is the center of my life.” There also are 12 core values, such as honesty and charity. Beck’s Web site claims the group is “non political,” but that’s hardly the case.
Oregon 9-12 Project operates independently, but cooperates with other conservative and libertarian groups under the tea party umbrella, Scevola says.
Several Oregon 9-12 Project members are running for local offices in the May 18 primary, he says, including three of the four Republicans arrayed against incumbent Democrat David Wu in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District primary.
Scevola says he’s a lifelong independent, but sees the Republican Party as the only viable vehicle for his group and the tea party movement to make political inroads.
The Oregon 9-12 Project and a Salem sister group sponsored a conference in Turner, outside Salem, on Saturday. The event combined political speeches and nuts-and-bolts training in political organizing. More than 300 people registered from several different conservative and libertarian groups.
Cheerleader on the right
KPAM talk radio host Victoria Taft has long been a right-winger with a bullhorn, but she hit her stride with the local tea party movement.
While the mainstream media mostly ignored the tea party movement until last summer’s raucous Congressional town hall meetings, Taft has been there since “day two,” says Ludt. During the Feb. 27, 2009 protest in Portland, Taft says she leaned over to Ludt and said the two of them had to organize a much bigger protest for April 15.
Taft broadcast her radio show live from Pioneer Courthouse Square on April 15, as the movement demonstrated its newfound muscle with protests around the country.
“That was the fifth-largest in the nation,” Taft says. “Something’s happening here.”
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