ATLANTA – Tea Party activists in Georgia helped kill a proposed sales tax increase that would have raised billions of dollars for transportation projects. In Pennsylvania, Tea Party members pushed to have taxpayers send public school children to private schools. In Ohio, they drove a referendum to block state health insurance mandates.
These and other battles are evidence of the latest phase of the conservative movement, influencing state and local policy, perhaps more effectively than on a national level.
Tea Party organizers are refocusing, sometimes without the party label, to build broader support for their initiatives. The strategy has produced victories that activists say prove their staying power.
“I call it Tea Party 2.0,” said Amy Kremer, a Delta flight attendant who leads Tea Party Express. The California-based group, co-founded by GOP strategist Sal Russo, claims it’s the largest Tea Party political action committee.
The movement first showed its strength in Washington in 2009 as an umbrella for voters angry over President George W. Bush’s Wall Street rescue and President Obama’s stimulus package and auto manufacturer bailout, as well as the health care debate.
Mitt Romney gave the hard right at least a symbolic win by announcing Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, a Tea Party hero, as his running mate Saturday.
“What we’ve been doing is maturing,” Kremer said. “We are not out having rallies with all these signs with thousands of people. The work is happening on the ground.”
In Georgia, anti-tax activists from Tea Parties and other conservative groups helped persuade voters across much of the state, including metro Atlanta, to reject a penny-per-dollar sales tax increase for transportation spending.
The idea had support from the state’s Republican governor and Atlanta’s Democratic mayor.
In Pennsylvania, the dominant conservative player in the school-choice debate, a cause dear to conservatives, was FreedomWorks, an initiative of former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and powerful conservative financiers. Gov. Tom Corbett signed a law June 30 for student tuition grants that are paid for by businesses that, in return, receive state tax credits.
Activists in Ohio forced the ballot initiative on health care by gathering more than 400,000 signatures and hiring consultants to get 100,000 more.
Chris Littleton, a former Tea Party organizer, led the effort without the Tea Party label. The measure prevailed 2-to-1, he said, partly because the Tea Party name didn’t drive debate. Littleton is now state director of American Majority, founded by former Bush aide Ned Ryun.
All of that suggests political seasoning beyond a nascent protest.
Littleton said the best way to understand the landscape is to think of a “liberty movement” that has evolved.
“The original Tea Party didn’t write the Declaration of Independence,” Littleton said. “Everybody with a brain has abandoned protest as the means to accomplish policy.”