O’Donnell, who bears a physical and ideological resemblance to Sarah Palin, has recently announced that she will not give any more interviews to national media outlets, citing their opposition to her campaign. Trailing badly in the polls, she recently unveiled one of the more extraordinary political ads of modern times, beginning the 30-second message by stating: “I am not a witch.”
9. Sharron Angle, Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada
Her bid to oust the Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, is one of the most watched midterm races. Victory would not only be hugely symbolic but could make the difference between the Republicans winning and losing a Senate majority.
Though her right-wing credentials have never been questioned, her state of mind and suitability for the Senate have been, and frequently. She embodies the wackiness that critics of the Tea Party say is common among some of its followers.
Reid’s campaign has exploited a litany of Angle controversial comments and gaffes, including calling for the abolition of the Department of Education, and raising the spectre of “Second Amendment remedies” and “taking out Harry Reid” if Congress continued on its current course. She also came close to mocking parents with autistic children and said pregnant teenage rape victims were in a “making lemons into lemonade” situation.
It took some time for Angle to secure the endorsement of Sarah Palin and other Tea Party leaders in a race that pundits have said would be an easy win for a stronger Republican candidate. A 61-year-old grandmother of 10, like many Tea Party candidates she has emerged from a modest background of school board member and state assemblyman. She won a crowded primary thanks largely to the help of the Tea Party Express, who might be regretting their decision now.
Glenn Beck, 45, is arguably the heart and soul of the Tea Party movement. He began his broadcasting career as a DJ in Washington state at the age of 13. Since then he has become a multi-media giant as the host for both the nationally syndicated Glenn Beck Program (radio) and The Glenn Beck Show (TV). His other titles include author of six New York Times bestsellers, CEO of Mercury Radio Arts, and most recently, rally coordinator after the successful Restoring Honor Rally on 28 August 2010.
Raised as a Roman Catholic, Beck converted to Mormonism after struggling through addiction and divorce. Beck’s frequently religious rhetoric tends to alienate some Tea Party members who see the movement as a secular one. His huge audience and ability to galvanise conservatives has led to Beck being touted as a possible vice-presidential candidate with Sarah Palin - the conservative “dream ticket”. Beck's ambitions seem limitless but he has ruled out running on a White House ticket. He continues to promote the 912 Project, an organisation he founded in March 2009. Once accused Obama of being racist, saying: “This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture....I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”
7. Michele Bachmann, founder of the Congressional Tea Party caucus
Bachmann ranks second only to Sarah Palin in the ranks of staunchly conservative, anti-abortion women with large families and a knack for publicity who have stormed the national political stage in the past couple of years. Like Palin, she has drawn plenty of liberal scorn, not least for calling Barack Obama “un-American” during the 2008 campaign.
The 54-year-old former tax lawyer was at the forefront of Republican opposition to healthcare reform, an issue that drove Tea Party protests forward. By establishing a Tea Party caucus within the House Republican conference, she succeeded in giving the movement more institutional legitimacy and in merging the Republican and Tea Parties under a single banner,
It was a bold move that won her staunch support from Tea Party members - not to mention their large campaign donations. She will face off against state senator Tarryl Lynn Clark on Nov 2.
Chairman of the Club for Growth, a pro-business network, and president of the conservative National Review magazine. Worked for Goldman Sachs, serving as the corporation’s vice-chairman from 1982-1985. In his 18 years at the investment and securities firm, Rhodes was a convinced fiscal conservative.
Under his chairmanship, the Club for Growth has been among the biggest spenders in a record-breaking year for campaign donations. In preparation for the 2010 midterm elections, the Club for Growth reportedly plans to spend $24 million on conservative campaigns. One of the primary goals of the Club is to move away from the extensive Republican spending that characterised the Bush era, an intention that points to a schism between fiscally conservative groups, like the Tea Party, and the GOP.
Former House majority leader, current chairman of the conservative non-profit FreedomWorks, and author of “Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto”, Texan Dick Armey has become one of the most recognisable leaders of the Tea Party movement. Armey’s well-financed group FreedomWorks helped organise the first Tea Party tax day protests in 2009 and has helped organise many of the Tea Party rallies and protests against health care reform and government spending. FreedomWorks is known for their activist-training seminars in D.C.
But FreedomWorks has also been criticised for “astroturfing”, or grassroots organising that is actually planned by an organising committee, and Armey has faced accusations of using FreedomWorks as a front for corporate and lobbying interests. However, Armey has proven adept at channelling the energy of the Tea Party movement into a political force in the 2010 elections. By endorsing candidates alongside the Tea Party, FreedomWorks has helped candidates garner national attention and win over establishment-backed candidates.
Included in the 2010 TIME 100 list, Jenny Beth Martin was one of about 20 people on the conference call that kicked off the response to Rick Santelli’s rant. A co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, the movement’s largest membership organisation, and the co-chair of the Atlanta Tea Party, she also writes a blog called Jen’s Genuine Life, in which she writes about her family and everyday life.
Martin is a self-proclaimed “volunteer addict” with a long history of community involvement. She has been outspoken in efforts to keep the Tea Party free of racist epithets in favour of a focus on the movement’s key principles of fiscal responsibility, a constitutionally limited government and free markets. Martin helped lead the movement’s march on Washington on September 12, 2009, a breakthrough moment with thousands converging on Capitol Hill.
His live diatribe on business network CNBC from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade on Feb 19, 2009 was the spark that lit the fire. For five minutes Santelli lambasted the Obama administration’s plans to subsidise struggling homeowners. In a paean to hard-working middle America, he said: “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbour’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hand. President Obama, are you listening?”
He concluded: “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m going to start organising.”
As the footage went viral on the Internet, people in fact started organising the first anti-tax protests in the next few days. Santelli found he had tapped into a latent fear and anger over spending, the stimulus as well as the handling of home foreclosures.
He has not developed any affiliation with any Tea Party groups, but has described the rant as “the best five minutes of my life”.
Palin’s SarahPAC political action committee recently released an 80-second video that advertised her as the leader of the Tea Party, and gave a preview of what future campaign messages from the conservative celebrity might look like. Palin, 45, was elected as the first female and youngest ever governor of Alaska in 2006 having previously been mayor of Wasilla. Her term was dramatically interrupted when the Republican Party chose her to run with John McCain as a Vice Presidential candidate. When the pair lost to Obama in 2008, Palin returned to Alaska to resign from her role as governor.
Since then, Palin has been very busy. Last year she released her bestselling book Going Rogue: An American Life and has been in constant demand as a speaker for various Republican and Tea Party events. She was the keynote speaker at the first Tea Party Convention in Nashville, and drew attention for her alleged $100,000 appearance fee. She coined the term “death panels”, which helped galvanise conservative opposition to health care reform: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
Conservative candidates for the November election have sought her endorsement for its ability to help struggling contestants secure substantial leads in the polls. Significant numbers of Tea partiers view Palin with suspicion, seeing her as a social conservative without coherent views about the economy and size of government. Some conservative opponents suggest she has exploited the Tea Party. Plain’s recent utterances suggest that a 2012 presidential run is becoming likely.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Amy Kremer is a former airline stewardess who like other key grassroots organisers in the Tea Party is a political neophyte.
She found her feet as a political blogger during the 2008 presidential campaign, and a few days after the Rick Santelli rant took part in a conference call that organised the first nine simultaneous protests at the end of February 2009.
A founding member of Tea Party Patriots, she helped organise the waves of protests against healthcare reform the following summer at town hall meetings. It was then that Washington began to take notice of the movement.
In October 2009, Kremer defected from the TPP to join the Tea Party Express to focus her efforts on fiscal change rather than issues and to elect suitable candidates. She left with the passwords to the TPP website and email list, prompting a lawsuit by her former TPP colleagues. Currently chairman of the TPE, she spent months on the ground supporting Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell in their surprise Republican primary victories.
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