In Mississippi, Jenny Beth Martin and Tea Party Patriots try to prove their worth
Never mind that it’s 92 degrees and nearing the end of the day: Jenny Beth Martin has started jogging between houses.
“I’ve gotta get my steps,” she calls back to the rented Suburban with the Florida license plates that has been shuttling her around with the air-
conditioning set to full blast.
In from Georgia, Martin has been spending much of the past three weeks in the state, holding conferences, making fundraising calls, meeting with local chapters of the tea party, and yes, walking door-to-door to turn out the vote for conservative Senate hopeful Chris McDaniel. But unlike most volunteers here, as the head of the national Tea Party Patriots, a group she co-founded and helped bring to national prominence, she’s on track to make $450,000 this year doing all this, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service filings. And to top that off, the group’s latest disclosures also note that she is allowed to travel first-class on any domestic flight she takes as president of the organization — although her lawyer says she doesn’t take advantage of the perk.
So, clad in what looks like a black tennis outfit, with a pair of oversized sunglasses crowning her long straight hair and a week out from the runoff primary election between McDaniel and incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran, Martin wants more than to hit 10,000 steps a day: She’s trying to prove her worth.
Earlier this month, her group, along with all the national tea party groups, missed out on the biggest story of the year.
“People say this is a big tea party victory,” Laura Ingraham said on Fox News about David Brat’s historic Republican primary win in Virginia against House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. “So people, understand this: The national Tea Party Network, Tea Party Patriots, FreedomWorks — I don’t believe any of these organizations did anything for Dave Brat. Dave Brat couldn’t get Jenny Beth Martin, who is the head of the Tea Party Patriots, the largest tea party organization in the country — he couldn’t get her on the phone.”
Martin, 43, acknowledges that the organization did not put any money behind Brat. She says she met with him before the primary to say that they were all in on Mississippi, a marquee race with much better polling. And while she says she has no regrets about the decision, Ingraham’s criticisms clearly stung.
“She didn’t know, she never talked to me,” Martin says after an elderly man shouts from his window to just leave whatever she was handing out by the door. “She was misinformed.”
A few nights earlier, Martin’s communications director, Kevin Broughton, over Coors Light and vodka shots, had been more emphatic.
“When did Laura Ingraham become Chris Matthews?” he asked, smoking a cigarette in one of the last bars in Jackson that allow it. “When did she love to hear the sound of her own voice so much?”
Such is the anguish of the Tea Party Patriots. The left hates them, the establishment wants to “crush” them (Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s word), and now conservative radio and Fox News have started calling them out. All this on the heels of a report in The Washington Post that national tea party groups were raking in money without doling much out to candidates themselves.
WashingtonPost
6/22/14
