The Tea Party Glossary

Here's one thing about the Tea Party movement everyone can agree on: It's confusing. With decentralization as a core value, the Tea Party phenomenon can seem like a baffling collection of individuals and organizations, often divided against each other. But with its first national convention now underway in Nashville, and as Tea Party groups gear up for campaigns around the country, it's time we met the movement's main players. Herewith, a handy guide.

KEY DATES IN THE MOVEMENT

February 19, 2009 – Rick Santelli of CNBC goes on a rant against homeowner mortgage bailouts, calling for a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest big government intervention in the economy.

February 27 – Dozens of “Tea Party” protests occur across the country. In Washington D.C. the event coincides with the mainstream Conservative Political Action Conference.

April 15 – Announced by Top Conservatives on Twitter, fanned by conservative blogs, and coordinated by the new website TaxDayTeaParty.com, protests occur in 300 cities—to great fanfare on FOX.

July 4 – Another day of protest garners less coverage than the tax day events, but keeps momentum moving.

September 12 – Coordinated by FreedomWorks and heavily promoted by Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, tens of thousands of protesters converge on Washington D.C.

January 7, 2010 – RNC chairman Michael Steele tells a St. Louis radio station, “I’m a tea partier, I’m a town haller, I’m a grass-rootser.”

January 19 – Scott Brown defeats Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts senate special election, with help from an influx of tea party volunteers and donations.

February 4-6 – National Tea Party Convention takes place in Nashville, headlined by Sarah Palin.

KEY FIGURES IN THE MOVEMENT (ALPHABETICAL)

Dick Armey – The former House Republican conference leader heads up FreedomWorks, a platform that he uses to school Republican party brass in how to appeal to the tea party base. In August, he was asked to resign his lobbying position at DLA Piper, which had been pushing health care reform while Armey’s group battled against it.

Glenn Beck - The FOX talker is perhaps the tea party movement’s most prominent and beloved media figure, having orchestrated the September 12 protest in Washington D.C. He has been skeptical of the Nashville convention, however, and will be headlining this year’s CPAC instead.

Keli Carender (a.k.a. Liberty Belle) – The Seattle-area hipster teacher with a theatrical streak organized the first anti-stimulus protest on February 16, 2009. Carender gained a large following with her energetic blogging and leads the Washington state tea party group, which organizes around issues from highways to health care. She was scheduled to speak at the Nashville convention, but the controversy prompted her to cancel yesterday.

Erick Erickson – As the editor-in-chief of RedState.com, an influential right-wing blog, Erickson has decried what he sees as the insufficient conservatism of Republican lawmakers and has championed tea party candidates like Doug Hoffman in NY-23. In early January, Erickson called out Judson Phillips’s National Tea Party Convention for seeming “scammy.”

Amy Kremer – Kremer, who blogs at Southern Belle Politics, was a leader in Tea Party Patriots until the group’s board filed suit against her in November 2009 for seizing control of parts of their website and email database. The episode, which the press played as a bitter internecine battle, brought the movement to one of its most fragile points. Kremer still leads the Atlanta Tea Party.

Michael Patrick Leahy – After a career in management consulting and media strategy, Leahy founded Top Conservatives on Twitter, a community of right-wing early adopters who tweet with the hashtag #TCOT. He was active in organizing the first tea parties, and self-published Rules for Conservative Radicals, an adaptation of Saul Alinsky’s seminal text. Leahy, based in Nashville, is now affiliated with the National Tea Party Coalition.

Michelle Malkin – The prolific blogger, author, and Fox News commentator has been on board with the tea party movement from the beginning.

Jenny Beth Martin – A computer programmer by training, Martin became a full-time blogger and Republican activist in the early 2000s. After her family went bankrupt in the midst of the recession—a tale chronicled through her role in Tea Party: The Documentary Film—she helped found Tea Party Patriots and became director of political operations at Smart Girl Politics.

John O’Hara and J.P. Freire – In February 2009, John O’Hara, a twenty-something staffer at the Chicago-based Heartland Foundation, and J. P. Freire, a writer with the American Spectator, organized an anti-bailout protest in front of the White House and several simultaneous ones around the country. Though both still comment frequently in the media, the two young activists have since stepped back from the vanguard of the movement—O’Hara recently released a book on the tea parties, and Freire holds forth from the Washington Examiner. 

Eric Odom – The Chicago-based libertarian online activist, through his firm Strategic Activism LLC, is the man behind TaxDayTeaParty.com, the American Liberty Alliance, and the anti-incumbent Liberty First PAC, which is in the process of endorsing and funneling money towards tea party-minded candidates around the country. Along with Patrick Ruffini, Odom also organized the DontGO movement, which urged Republican legislators to keep the House in session through the 2008 summer recess, and was the most prominent tea party figure to make The Telegraph’s list of America’s top 100 conservatives.

Judson and Sherry Phillips – Nashville personal injury attorney Judson Phillips and his wife Sherry are the masterminds behind this weekend’s National Tea Party Convention. Judson, a former district attorney and 2002 GOP candidate for his county’s board of commissioners, has a troubled financial past. According to disaffected former volunteers, the Phillipses always hoped to make a profit from the pricey convention, and eventually drove all dissenting voices out of the planning effort.

Ned Ryun – The son of former Kansas congressman Jim Ryun and a one-time “presidential writer” for George W. Bush—which is one way to describe having worked in the Office of Correspondence—Ned Ryun is the founder of American Majority. Ryun also records podcasts on the history of the Constitutional Convention, and directs the Madison Project, a PAC that raises money for conservative candidates.

Howard Kaloogian – This former member of the California House of Representatives is now the chairman of Our Country Deserves Better, the PAC behind Tea Party Express. After leading the recall of Gray Davis, he launched unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and the House in 2006.