Tea Party for Trump is launching a get-out-the-vote partnership with the National Rifle Association in Ohio and several other key states around the country, “including Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida,” the group announced in a statement on Tuesday.
The group’s first meeting open to the public to explain the operational details of this partnership will be held this Saturday in Lewis Center, Ohio, just north of Columbus.
“The great thing about this project is that volunteers from anywhere in the United States can help get-out-the-vote in these key swing states by simply signing up on our web site,” Tea Party for Trump spokesperson Bill Hennessy said. Hennessy is the co-founder of the St. Louis Tea Party, whose first rally at the Gateway Arch on February 27, 2009 attracted more than one thousand attendees and was part of the fifty similar rallies held around the country that day.
Less than two months later on April 15, 2009, more than one million supporters attended Tax Day Tea Party rallies in more than 900 locations around the country, and the Tea Party movement was launched.
“I helped found the Tea Party for Trump project because after a series of critical, hard-won election cycles in 2010 and 2014, I felt like we are ready to focus our efforts on winning the White House,” Hennessy added.
Hennessy is the author of Turning on Trump, the story of his own conversion from an anti-Trumper to a supporter of the Republican presidential nominee on the basis of his commitment to the three core values of the Tea Party Movement: constitutionally limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility.
“Tea Party for Trump is a fun, simple way for people to become involved in a substantial, productive way, no matter where you are in the country,” he noted.
“Already, Tea Party activists across America have contacted us through our website to join us in Ohio, on the ground,” said Tom Zawistowski, a Founding Member and spokesperson for Tea Party for Trump.
In July Zawistowki, the co-founder of the Portage County TEA Party and president of Ohio’s “We the People Convention,” a coalition of Tea Party and liberty groups in the Buckeye State, announced that group’s alliance with the NRA “to help win the critical swing state for Donald Trump.”
“The majority of the TEA Party/Liberty Groups in Ohio will be aligning with the National Rifle Association in an effort to elect Donald Trump as the next President of the United States,” a statement from “We the People Convention” said at the time.
Tea Party for Trump is a project of the Ohio based Freedom for All PAC and is organized by fourteen Founding Members, all of whom were original Tea Party organizers in their local communities when the movement launched in 2009.
Its purpose is to help the existing partnership the “We the People Convention” has with the NRA in Ohio, and expand it to other key swing states.
“Our project answers the question we hear most often from Tea Party and grassroots activists around the country: ‘What can I do?’” spokesperson Zawistowski said.
“After a quick sign-up, volunteers from anywhere in the country can help. For example, people can make phone calls, travel to Ohio in person to help with get-out-the-vote efforts, or even participate in our unique Postcard Program,” he explained.
Spokesperson Hennessy emphasized that, despite press reports to the contrary, Tea Party activism is alive and well in the 2016 presidential election:
In 2010, Tea Party and liberty-minded grassroots people organized to build the conservative majority in the House, where we won by record margins of 63 seats. In 2014, we focused on the Senate, picking up nine seats.
To date, along the way, a total of over 900 elected offices have been won at the local, state and national levels with the tireless efforts of people all across the country who are fed up with out-of-touch elitists telling them to ‘sit down, shut up, and do what we say.’
After we deliver the White House to the outsider, Donald Trump, we can begin, in earnest, the process of returning our country to her founding principles of constitutional adherence, fiscal responsibility, free markets.
After the first Tea Party for Trump public event is held on Saturday in Lewis Center, Ohio, a second event, a rally, will be held on Sunday in Festus, Missouri, near St. Louis.
Michael Patrick Leahy is one of fourteen Founding Members of Tea Party for Trump and the author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of Tea Party Movement.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.