Political Tea Party Backed By Alan Grayson: Democrats Caught Using Tea Party Name to Post Phony Candidates Unaffiliated with Grassroots Movement

RPOF ICYMI - June 22, 2010
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“Ruthless Democrats have tried to mislead Florida voters by using the name “Tea Party” to run bogus candidates in key races across Florida,” said RPOF Executive Director Ronnie Whitaker. “Rather than running credible candidates who support the non-partisan Tea Party grassroots movement, these spoiler candidates are mostly former Democrats running in seats hundreds of miles away from their actual homes. These Tea Party imposters admittedly have no idea what it takes to run in and win and election, let alone an understanding of the constitutional responsibilities required of our elected officials.

“Alan Grayson along with his dubious cohorts and their Democrat allies have orchestrated a coordinated effort to mislead and confuse Florida voters and their actions are reprehensible,” continued Whitaker. “This isn’t a game, elections have real consequences.” 

Grayson Paid Company Formed By Tea Party Candidate U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson's campaign has paid nearly $20,000 to a corporation created by a Florida Tea Party candidate, with help from that party's top consultant, lending support to Republicans' claims that Grayson is funneling some of his $30-plus million fortune toward a party that is running a candidate against him in the general election. Grayson's motivation, Republicans say: to support a "sham" party whose candidate will siphon away conservative votes from the eventual Republican nominee in November, boosting Grayson's chances of re-election.(WKMG Orlando, 6/21/10) Read the full report here.

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/23982225/detail.html

Political Tea Party Backed By Grayson, Activists Say 'Tea Party is a Movement, Not a Political Party "We have always said that the political Tea Party has nothing to do with the Tea Party movement," said Kelsey Hoffman, a local Tea Party activist. "The recent stories documenting the connection between the Florida Tea Party (political party) and Alan Grayson just show how disingenuous the people that founded the political party are and echoes what we have been saying all along; this party does not represent our movement. I wish the media would quit calling the folks that started the political party "tea party organizers", they have never planned a Tea Party, they just tried to use our movement's name. Thankfully nobody is falling for it."

Local Tea Party activists are prepared for a summer-long battle to reclaim their movement's name. They also plan to educate voters on the difference between the Tea Party movement and the political party. (Orlando Tea Party Press Release, June 22, 2010)

Contact Voters? I Don't Even Know What That Means
"None of these people have campaigned. None of them have opened campaign accounts before. It's very unusual," said state GOP Chairman John Thrasher. Many of the candidates are young, don't appear to have many assets or full-time jobs and materialized for the first time in the final hours before the noontime end of qualifying last Friday. At least seven of the 20 appear to live outside the district they are running for – sometimes hundreds of miles away. 

One, Darin Dunmire, 35, is an airline pilot who works in India three-fourths of the year and owns a home in Kentucky. But he lists his legal residence as the same Orlando address as his mother, Peggy Dunmire, who is running for the U.S. House as a Tea Party candidate.

Another, Jon Foley, 24, is O'Neal's son, who said he and Crawford, his friend, had talked about running for office when they enrolled at the University of Central Florida. Foley is listed as Crawford's campaign treasurer. But they don't appear to have plans to contact voters. "Contact voters? I don't even know what that means," Foley said Monday.

…. We're just thorns. We just get it in our mind to do stuff and are troublemakers," O'Neal said. (Orlando Sentinel, June 21, 2010)

One of Alan Grayson's Pollsters Is A Tea Party Candidate
One of Rep. Alan Grayson 's pollsters is running for the state House in Florida as a Tea Party candidate, fueling Republican suspicions that the Democratic Congressman is using to a newly formed third party to boost his own re-election bid. On Friday, Victoria Torres, 44, of Orlando qualified to run as a Tea Party candidate in state House district 51 in the last hours of the qualifying period. A call to Torres was returned by Nick Egoroff, communications director for the Florida Tea Party, who described Torres as a "quasi-paralegal assistant who works in a law office." But apparently, Torres is also a pollster. According to records from the Florida Department of State office, Torres incorporated Public Opinion Strategies Inc. in December 2008. In the first quarter of this year, Grayson's campaign made two payments to her firm, totaling $11,000, for polling and survey expenses. (Roll Call, June 22, 2010)

Tea Party Activists Say O'Neal And Guetzloe Don't Really Represent The Tea-Party Movement The political party's very existence is a sore spot with many activists in the tea-party movement, who want it to remain a grassroots force, not a political party. Tea-party activists accuse O'Neal of threatening groups across the state with legal action if they continued to use the "tea party" name. In response, some 34 plaintiffs have joined a federal suit filed against the Florida Tea Party, O'Neal and Guetzloe. They claim O'Neal and Guetzloe don't really represent the tea-party movement. (Orlando Sentinel, 6/14/10)


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