Tea Party Patriots Founder Forced Out Over Support Of GOP-Linked 'Astroturf' Group

Tea Party Activists Reject PAC-Backed ‘Tea Party Express’

Tea Party Patriots did not want to lose Amy Kremer. The Atlanta activist had co-founded the organization. She’d helped organize some of the biggest events in the nationwide Tea Party movement. Then, at the end of September, Kremer decided to join the Tea Party Express, a project of the conservative Our Country Deserves Better PAC that was embarking on its third cross-country round of anti-tax, anti-spending rallies.
This wasn’t going to work for Tea Party Patriots. As several leaders in the group told TWI, they stressed to Kremer that Our Country Deserves Better was a partisan-leaning PAC that rushed to the aid of Republican candidates; working with them could imperil the tax status of non-profit Tea Party Patriots. Other leaders argued that Mark Williams, the vice chairman of Our Country Deserves Better, was a firebrand whose rhetoric made the rest of the movement look bad. In May, Kremer had told Newsmax.com that the movement was being “hijacked” by Republican operatives, with the biggest offenders being the Republican Governor’s Association. Kremer did not respond to multiple requests for comment from TWI.
Kremer turned down the advice and took the plunge,signing up for the Tea Party Express’s next tour. On September 27 she was removed from the board of Tea Party Patriots. She responded by locking the Tea Party Patriots email account, a problem that the other members of the group quickly solved, but one that rankled.
“It appears that Amy has chosen the Tea Party Express over Tea Party Patriots,” said Mark Meckler, a Sacramento, Calif. organizer. “That’s her decision.”
An argument has broken out, perhaps inevitably, between Tea Party activists and one of the groups that has laid claim to the Tea Party mantle. The self-described grassroots activists in Tea Party Patriots and the American Liberty Alliance see the Tea Party Express as a sham organization, using the political heft of the movement to push a bland, partisan Republican agenda. Privately and publicly, they accuse the Tea Party Express of being an “astroturf” outfit, a scheme for Republican strategists and candidates to take advantage of a movement that was chugging along fine without them.
“Right now,” said Tea Party Patriots national organizer Jenny Beth Martin, “we can’t be involved with PACs. We want to make sure the organizations we align with are in line with our core values–that they’re not just supporting one party over the other. There could be a point to the Tea Party Express, but I don’t think its goal is the best goal.”
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