Hampton Roads Tea Party gains clout after scrappy start

Early last year the Hampton Roads Tea Party was alive with gimmicks, urging people to send pork rinds and tea bags to members of Congress as a sign of their disgust with government bailouts, stimulus plans and huge deficits.

The group organized a "Pig Out - Cut the Pork" rally in Virginia Beach's Town Center Plaza in April 2009. Hundreds showed up to wave American flags and homemade signs as speakers railed against big government and taxes.

The hope, co-founder Karen Miner Hurd said, was that the displays of anger and resentment would spur politicians to reverse the landmark spending bills.

It didn't work.

This spring, the group rallied again with loud enthusiasm for anti-government speakers. But this time, it was different.

Along the edges of the crowd were representatives of all six people running for the Republican nomination in the 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses Virginia Beach, the Eastern Shore, and parts of Norfolk and Hampton. Several candidates worked the crowd, shaking hands and handing out brochures. The same candidates participated in the Tea Party's election forum at an Oceanfront hotel, making sure to say how much they admired the movement.

"A year ago, we were right-wing extremists," Hurd said with a smile. "Now, we're in this phase where people are saying, 'You guys could be useful.' "

The rallies have been fun, cathartic and helped like-minded people find each other, organizers say. This year, members want to move into the political mainstream - including candidate endorsements - to more aggressively push their agenda to shrink government's size and power, reduce taxes and make people more directly responsible for their own welfare.

For the first time, the group's board has endorsed a candidate, supporting Ben Loyola in Tuesday's 2nd District GOP primary over Scott Rigell, who has the support of Gov. Bob McDonnell and other state Republican leaders. Loyola swayed the board in part because of his promises to support across-the-board tax cuts and a freeze on all federal hiring. The board sponsored automated phone calls to tea partiers last week, urging them to support Loyola.

"So far, this Republican primary election is being dominated by money and the GOP establishment," Hurd said, acknowledging that Rigell's campaign has raised at least $1.2 million, which is more than the other five candidates combined.

"We feel very strongly the Republican machine in Hampton Roads needs to be defeated," she said.

The Hampton Roads Tea Party is part of a loose patchwork of local and state conservative organizations that believe they can save the country by undoing a century's worth of government expansion that created, among other things, Social Security, welfare programs of all stripes, federal education programs, controls on commerce and the massive bureaucracy that runs it all.

While often voicing their anger with all elected federal leaders regardless of political affiliation, tea partiers are fiscal conservatives and ideologically closer to Republicans than Democrats.

"They're a very potent force in American politics today," said McDonnell, who gives them credit for helping him win election in November. "It's a sort of a new, high-energy coalition... independents and Republicans and some Democrats that are just concerned about the overall direction of the nation."

What's unclear in Hampton Roads is whether the Tea Party will have a measurable impact in this year's congressional elections. Sister tea parties in other states have shown what's possible. In Utah, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Bennett, a three-term Republican who voted with his party almost 90 percent of the time, was ousted last month at a state GOP convention in favor of a tea party advocate. In Kentucky, tea party activist Rand Paul, a doctor and son of Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, won the GOP's U.S. Senate nomination, soundly defeating the handpicked choice of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The rise of the tea party isn't unique in American history, said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political science professor.

"Bad times often generate popular movements of one sort or another. American history is dotted with them. The tea party is part of that continuum. That's not to say it will be successful," Sabato said.

Many fade into obscurity once the newness wears off or their members begin to disagree among themselves, he said. "It's difficult to sustain a movement. All their predecessors can tell them that."

Despite the name, the Hampton Roads Tea Party is not a true political party, nor do its members want to become one. The group is registered as a nonprofit, tax-exempt advocacy organization, known as a 501(c)4. It has about 2,000 people on its mailing list, Hurd said.

Local Tea Party activists tell similar stories of how they came to the movement. Many are angry and a little frightened about the future. They've been doing a slow burn for years over government growth and too many taxes.

Then came the hard times of the recession and the rapid decisions in 2008 and 2009 by Congress and two presidents - first George W. Bush, then Barack Obama - to spend hundreds of billions on bailouts of finance institutions and automakers, and a massive economic stimulus plan.

Coby Dillard, 30, of Norfolk said he knew it was time to act in late 2008 when he read a news report that the federal deficit amounts to a $42,000 debt for every man, woman and child. His son was 1 at the time and his daughter was due that spring. He couldn't fathom them starting life so deep in debt.

The former Navy yeoman turned college student began to blog about politics and found Karen Hurd on Facebook.

The pair started talking and the Hampton Roads Tea Party was born in early 2009.

"It grew from there," Hurd said. "I'm a network marketer. It's a skill set that I have."

Norvell Rose of Virginia Beach said he reached "the boiling point" with the health care overhaul. He went to last year's rally not sure what to expect.

"I was 56 years old. I said to myself I had to stand up and do something," Rose said. "When I got to that rally, I saw a thousand people who felt the same way... I felt very at home."

Today, Rose hosts a weekly talk radio program with Hurd called FreedomWize that's broadcast on WYRM-AM and the Internet.

Hurd, the 51-year-old daughter of a Detroit autoworker, is perhaps the most dominant figure in the regional movement.

A left-leaning feminist while in college, she has morphed into a conservative Christian home-schooling mother of five who operates her own direct-marketing sales business. She has been married for 25 years to Dale Hurd, a reporter for the Christian Broadcasting Network.

She attributes her transformation to learning to earn a living, personal study and constant conversations with her husband.

She is fond of a quote from Winston Churchill: "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain."

What Hurd and others propose is a major transformation of the federal government to unwind many of the progressive advances of the 20th century - Social Security, welfare and health care programs and much regulation of business. They want the federal government to turn over some functions, such as education, entirely to states or local governments.

If expensive government social and subsidy programs were abolished, they argue, the people who truly need them would find other ways to survive. Americans will step up with charitable contributions. A considerably smaller government will leave most people with more money.

Americans will have to trust their neighbors to do the right thing, Hurd said.

"Isn't one of the founding values of the United States that you have a responsibility to yourself and your family first, and a responsibility to your fellow man?"

Children will not starve in this country, she said. "Nobody is going to let that happen."

Social Security and Medicare as we know it today won't end immediately because too many elderly people have no other choice, Hurd said. But they will eventually have to go away.

"Maybe you say to people like me, 'Hey, you're 50. Guess what? You're probably not going to retire for 20 years. Man up. Provide for yourself. You know what? We have to cut back on your participation.' "

Families will need to take care of each other, she said, noting that with smaller tax bills, they should be able to do so.

"Let me ask grandma's kids who probably drive nice cars. 'Can you help grandma out? Can you and a couple of other siblings pitch in a couple of hundred bucks a month?' " she said.

"One of the things the social programs have done is they have torn apart families and community structures," she said. "They literally created a dependence on the government."

Tea Party members believe the government vastly overregulates commerce to the point that regulations often kill a business before it can turn a profit.

Hurd suggests that government regulations should only be about 10 percent of what they are today.

"People have been taught that business is bad, that businesspeople are bad... and that corporations are bad. Well, they're not," Hurd said. "Some are, but they all are not."

The Tea Party wants to gradually remove regulations and rely on businesses to take the right steps to protect the public and the environment from harm. If they do not, Hurd said, there are laws that can punish them, and the public will no longer buy their products.

"Market pressure is a powerful thing," she said. "Allow businesses to exercise some common sense."

The size and power of a company shouldn't matter, she said. Even if a firm has grown to be a large conglomerate, it should only be subject to minimal scrutiny.

"Did they commit a crime?" she asked. "The assumption is you're big so you must be doing something wrong."

To Hurd, catastrophes such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the collapse of the housing market because of unsound loans are arguments for less regulation, not more. Existing regulations weren't able to stop them, she said, so there is no foolproof protection.

Exactly what level of minimal regulations to protect people or the environment is not clear. Hurd said people need to start with the assumption that more government rules won't prevent people from doing bad things.

"It goes back, again, to taking personal responsibility for yourself," she said. "The idea there is some kind of risk-free serene life and you can be prosperous... That doesn't exist in the universe."

Not everything the government does is on the chopping block. Tea Party members note that the Constitution states clearly that providing for the national defense is a critical role of the federal government, as is administering justice.

In Hampton Roads, the movement's focus is two-pronged: educate members about the nation's founding documents and the techniques for lobbying and political activism, while prodding those running for office to endorse the kinds of dramatic changes the Tea Party demands.

The heart of the education effort is an allied group, the 912 First Landing Patriots, which assists in setting up small groups, similar to Bible-study classes, to read and discuss the Constitution, its amendments and other founding documents.

At one session on a recent Monday night, 11 people gathered around a restaurant table piled with notepads, textbooks, copies of the Constitution and plates of appetizers. Their focus that evening was the Sixth Amendment, which protects the right of an accused criminal to a jury trial.

At one point the group was stumped by a French phrase in a textbook describing the amendment.

Leslie Jones leaned forward as she typed a Google query on her laptop: "what is voir dire?"

"You find anything in there, Leslie?" asked Paul Davis, a retired Navy vet.

Jones, who works in a pharmacy, said the words mean "to tell the truth."

The eight women and three men talked some more - often raising their voices to be heard over screaming children at a table nearby. Eventually they figured out the term referred to lawyers questioning potential jurors to make sure they would be impartial.

There were some smiles when the answer became clear.

But Davis was exasperated.

"Why can't they put this stuff in plain English?" he asked.

Hurd said there has been a steep learning curve for some who have to learn the fundamentals of American government anew. People have forgotten or never learned the nation's founding principles, she said.

"We have inalienable rights endowed by our creator, not government-ordained. They are to be government-protected," Hurd said. "Limited government serves best because there's a limited amount of shackles and restrictions to what you can do."

While Tea Party activists revel in getting under the skin of their opponents, they also are trying to get out from under the view by some that they are racists. The label stems from accusations that racist epithets were shouted at a recent Washington rally and that the political attacks on President Barack Obama have racial overtones.

Not true, local leaders say, adding that it's Obama's policies, not his skin color, that disturb them.

Coby Dillard argues that labeling the entire movement because of bigoted comments by a few isn't right.

Dillard has first-hand experience with the issue. He is a black conservative who worked for McDonnell's campaign in 2009 and flirted briefly earlier this year with running for Congress. While he acknowledges there are not many blacks in the movement, he says that's not because of racism.

"For me, if I show up at rallies, people kind of gravitate to me," he said.

Dillard believes the argument for limited government and more personal responsibility can resonate among African Americans. The only way to overcome the perception about race is for black Tea Party activists to reach out to other black Americans, he said.

"I've got to be able to go to the community and say, 'This is how we're going to help

you help yourself,' " Dillard said.

Those who dislike the Tea Party's larger message are going to use race as a weapon, Dillard said.

"There are people who spend so much time looking for the 'gotcha' moment," he said. "It's not going to go away no matter what we do, what we say."

Bill Bartel, (757) 446-2398, bill.bartel@pilotonline.com