Michigan tea party supporters make surprising gains, now face major test at state convention

Michigan tea partiers launch surprise push

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser talks enthusiastically about welcoming tea party supporters into the GOP, but he wasn’t planning to give them his seat at the state convention.

Michigan tea party supporters flocked to Republican party meetings across the state this month and won several hundred delegate seats for the Saturday state convention, including Weiser’s. Now, the activists are positioned for an attempt to push the Michigan GOP further to the right and put hard-core conservatives on November’s general election ballot.

The tea party’s bid to capitalize on its delegate coup, which caught veteran Republican activists by surprise, is an important test for a national movement seeking concrete political impact.

The movement has racked up several big wins in Senate primaries in Kentucky, Utah, Nevada and Colorado this year, and is on the brink of prevailing in Alaska. But it’s also suffered a few notable losses — the latest came Tuesday, when former Rep. J.D. Hayworth lost to Sen. John McCain in Arizona.

Tea party supporters also have won GOP delegate seats or other party roles in Maine, Idaho, Illinois and several other states in recent months. But their potential impact could be the greatest in Michigan because the convention chooses the Republican nominees for secretary of state, attorney general, education boards and the Michigan Supreme Court.

The party’s moderate choice for governor, business executive Rick Snyder, picked well-regarded conservative state Rep. Brian Calley as his running mate Wednesday to avoid running into difficulty getting his lieutenant governor choice ratified by tea partiers.

Efforts to press other tea party causes, such as draconian cuts in government, could also produce a collision with moderate Republicans who have held sway despite growing conservative strength in the state. GOP leaders are worried that a rebuff of tea party followers could sap their support for GOP candidates in the closely fought general election campaign.

Although there is no precise count of the delegates affiliated with Michigan’s approximately 50 active tea party groups, they could amount to a fifth or more of the nearly 2,100 party activists who will vote at the East Lansing meeting.

Tea party leaders plan to hold their own pre-convention caucus meeting Friday night. They say they can leverage their strength by coordinating efforts, as they did in seizing the delegate slots.

“This is about wrestling with the very devil himself, if we have to, for the soul of the Republican Party,” said Dennis Moore, a “way underemployed” drywall contractor who leads the Willow Run Tea Party Caucus in Ypsilanti, a working class city about 30 miles southwest of Detroit.

Some GOP activists don’t know what to expect at the meeting, which is normally staid and consensus-oriented.

“Is it really about seeking new direction? Is it really about trying to get more conservatives elected? If so, come and join us,” said Greg Moore of Athens, who was beaten by a tea party candidate this month after serving as a delegate many times over the last 25 years. “But if it’s just trying to create havoc, there’s going to be problems.”

Weiser still will preside at the convention. But the major GOP donor and former ambassador to Slovakia must go as an alternate after he was defeated at the party meeting in Washtenaw County. He said he’s still excited by the tea party push. “These are the people who are going to go out and work for this ticket after the convention,” he said.

The tea partiers won the positions by running their members in precinct elections, which normally attract few candidates, and then turning out in force at many county GOP meetings to support the winners for state convention slots.

Moore says he knows there are hard feelings about the results and expects a turbulent convention. “This is hitting the proverbial fan,” he said. “If they freeze us out, it’s going to be a huge, huge problem.”

In the race for secretary of state, five candidates are running so a bloc vote could be decisive. Some races could come down to a tussle over whether the tea party favorite or another candidate should win.

In Illinois, tea party supporters have won precinct delegate spots, although the winners don’t have a direct a role in choosing party candidates as they do in Michigan. Illinois tea party activist Tim Kraulidis said the low-level grass-roots role is important. “Now you’re not on the outside looking in,” he said.

In Idaho last month, a coalition of tea party members, Ron Paul disciples and old-guard conservatives crafted a state Republican platform that urged Idaho to seize federal land, recommended ending popular elections of U.S. senators and extolled gold and silver — an inflation hedge to U.S. Federal Reserve-issued greenbacks.

Tea party activists in Maine succeeded in getting the state convention to approve a platform inspired by tea partiers. In Ohio, a coalition of tea party groups waged a bitter, but eventually unsuccessful, battle to control the party central committee.

As the Michigan convention approaches, Snyder, a venture capitalist and former president of computer maker Gateway Inc., has been trying to reach out to tea party supporters. But Moore remembers all the meeting invitations Snyder turned down and said the groups won’t bend to party leaders.

“There may be a good old-fashioned floor fight,” he predicted.

Online:

Michigan Republican Party: www.migop.org