Region's Tea Party movement takes form in eastern Suffolk
Looking for results this November
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Robert and Mary Meyer were headed to Digger O'Dell's restaurant in downtown Riverhead last March when Mr. Meyer felt a rush of anxiety. He had planned the gathering, but the self-described "large utility company" employee was no public speaker.
"Do you think people will expect me to say something?" his wife, a teacher, recalled him asking as they headed south from their Baiting Hollow home. In a lighthearted attempt to comfort her husband, Ms. Meyer assured him they would likely be dining alone that night.
"He wrote a few things down, but we were thinking we would probably be the only ones to show up," she said of the minutes before the Glenn Beck viewing party they had arranged over the Internet.
"P.S. We ended up having 45 people come," Ms. Meyer said of what would become the first meeting of the Suffolk 9/12 Project political action group. "People waiting to be seated were actually peeking their heads in. They were saying, 'We overheard you talking. We feel the same way. We're fed up and we don't know what to do. Can we join you?'ââ"
Meanwhile, in West Islip, trade magazine publisher Stephen Flanagan, 55, had already started to organize a group of his own.
While the Meyers, both 44, were happy just to be meeting with like-minded people, the focus of Mr. Flanagan's Conservative Society for Action had already taken shape. He and his members wanted to oust incumbent lawmakers they felt weren't representing their constituents' conservative values, namely congressmen Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) and Steve Israel (D-Huntington).
Then came tax day, April 15. The Meyers and Mr. Flanagan found themselves doing the same thing at the same time, in different parts of Suffolk County.
The Meyers were in downtown Riverhead with other members of their group, some dressed in Revolutionary garb, at one of hundreds of TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Parties held across the U.S. Mr. Flanagan and his CSA sponsored an even larger and more raucous TEA Party outside county government offices in Hauppauge. People attending these events told reporters they were rallying against Wall Street bailouts, government involvement in private enterprise, socialized medicine and, above all, high taxes.
From then on, members of both organizations became known as "tea-partyers." It wasn't long before the groups, which now count almost 4,700 members between them, began collaborating. They've since arranged dozens of joint protests and rallies across Suffolk and elsewhere.
"Every step of the way, we've been working together," Mr. Flanagan said. "We're brothers in arms as far as I'm concerned."
Now, aside from different meeting halls, they're virtually the same group, with the same goals and objectives: To get conservative-minded people elected to local, state and federal offices, while working against perceived liberal incumbents -- chief among them, Congressman Bishop.
TEA PARTY POWER
Eastern Long Island's tea-partyers already appear to be enjoying political success. Although there's no definitive evidence, tea-partyers here believe their rowdy showing outside a Tim Bishop Town Hall meeting in Setauket last year helped spark similar health care protests across the U.S. Mr. Bishop for a time cancelled Town Hall appearances.
"Essentially, we fired the shot that was heard across the country," Mr. Meyer said of the June rally, from which a four-minute video clip went viral through YouTube. "Within two, three weeks you started seeing similar protests all across the country. That all started right here in Setauket."
"Obviously, the rallies worked," Mr. Flanagan said. "That health care bill was supposed to be passed before Aug. 1. But we scared enough of the entrenched elected incumbents that they started to think twice."
The groups also take credit for helping get Sean Walter, former head of the town's Conservative Party, narrowly elected as Riverhead Town supervisor in November, along with a full Republican Town Board.
And both organizations were recognized on a recent Fox News segment for their role in the election of state Assemblyman Dean Murray, a longtime county Republican committee member who himself organized a TEA Party protest in April in Medford.
Mr. Murray, credited as the first official tea-partyer elected to office, edged Democrat Lauren Thoden in a special election in the 3rd Assembly District last month. Local tea-partyers helped the effort by knocking on doors, handing out campaign literature and attending campaign events and fundraisers.
"It is the message that is resonating from ordinary, everyday tax-paying citizens," Mr. Murray, a CSA member, told Fox News during a segment on "Tea party power at the polls."
"Whether they are active in the Tea Party movement or not, we want a smaller government, we want fiscal responsibility," he said. "We want accountability from our political leaders and we want personal responsibility."
ABOUT THE TEA PARTY
It's not a political party. It's not even one group. Tea Party is an umbrella term for hundreds, possibly thousands, of conservative groups that began to spring up during Barack Obama's run for the presidency. Like most of those groups, the CSA and Suffolk 9/12 have joined larger national organizations such as Tea Party Patriots, which reportedly receives funding from conservative lobbying groups such as FreedomWorks, founded by former House majority leader Dick Armey.
National Tea Party groups' Web sites -- TeaPartyPatriots.org and TaxDayTeaParty.com, for example -- serve as organizational and educational resources that help give the smaller groups guidance and a united voice. There is no leader. There is no specific platform. Ms. Meyer and Mr. Flanagan said their groups receive no money from larger organizations or lobbying outfits. Both groups are unincorporated.
As for the local members -- unlike Mr. Murray, who has been heavily involved in Republican Party politics and had previously run for public office -- most local tea-partyers have never been politically active.
Before the meeting at Digger's in Riverhead, Mr. Meyer said he considered himself, like many others in Suffolk 9/12, just a "couch warrior," one who held strong political views but never did anything about it. For the most part, he and his members feel the country, with President Obama at the helm, is marching toward socialism, tyranny and bankruptcy -- not necessarily in that order -- and without the Tea Party, there would be little anyone could do to stop it.
"I knew there was a hunger for this out there," Mr. Meyer said. "That a lot of people like myself were sick and tired of yelling at the TV every night. People started realizing that, 'If I wait, possibly in five years from now I might not even have the opportunity to voice my opinion.'ââ"
Still, the tea-partyers say they are trying to remain nonpartisan. It's not about the party, but the candidate, they insist. Some feel the Republican Party abandoned them during the free-spending years of George W. Bush, and say they are prepared to lobby against people they help elect if those officials renege on promises of limited government and limited spending.
"Candidates will be held accountable, as long as we're proactive," said Catherine Tenek, 46, a county worker from Manorville and a Suffolk 9/12 member who attended last month's Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tenn. "We feel that up to this point, once candidates got in, they were just corrupted. We're hoping with the massive change in 2010, with the backing of the people, they can make these hard decisions."
Tea-partyers even insist they would support a Democrat, though they have not done so to date.
"If a Democratic candidate had conservative values, we would support them," Mr. Meyer said. "We just haven't seen that yet. I have not had one single Democrat approach me, so you just get the feeling they disagree with what we're all about."
CAN IT LAST?
Look for the Suffolk tea-partyers to have an impact in November's elections.
"A much smarter man than me once said, 'All politics is local.' So, I would say yes," they will have an impact "on the elections," said Long Island University professor Stanley Klein, who teaches classes on political parties and local politics at C.W. Post. "You don't have a lot of votes at a local level, so a couple of thousand votes turn an election."
Whether the groups will continue to grow, as they hope, is much harder to predict. Historically, such movements tend to get swallowed up by the major political parties, Dr. Klein said.
"Eventually, whatever these people are upset with, which is a pretty amorphous thing, disappears," he said. "And then they fall back into regular parties."
As for a potential lasting impact on policy, Dr. Klein doubted the movement would have any real effect. Government will continue to grow, he said, so long as citizens keep demanding more and more services.
He also pointed out that many tea-partyers, here and nationally, happen to be older retirees or government workers.
"I would guess many of them receive a sizeable amount of money from Social Security and they're on Medicaid, yet they want smaller government," he said. "Are they out of their minds?
"It's also not a group that has the conservative leadership like we had in Congress back in the '90s," he continued. "It is not a group that is based on a philosophy. All they know is they want smaller government, yet they want to keep their services -- but they don't want to talk about that -- and they want the rascals out who created all the problems. And if they looked in the mirror, they would know who is creating the problems."
The Tea Party's future may also hinge on the economic failures or successes of the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress.
"I don't think anybody who is sitting in [the presidency] right now would have great approval ratings, because we're spending money," said Riverhead's Democratic Committee chairman Butch Langhorn. "Whether that's the answer to the country's problems or not, we can't be sure. I don't like spending money, but if that's what has to happen to get us on track ... then we'll just have wait and see."
He also played down the effects the Tea Party may have had on elections last November and since then, including Republican Scott Brown winning the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat left open by the death of Democrat Ted Kennedy.
"I don't know whether it was the Tea Party or just the general feeling of the way policies are going today," he said.
ENEMY Number ONE: TIM BISHOP
Southold tea-partyer Craig Johnson gives the same reason most of his fellow Suffolk 9/12 members offer when explaining why Congressman Bishop, whose district covers much of Suffolk County, is enemy number one for the local Tea Party.
"Because of the way he's voted," explained Mr. Johnson, a 55-year-old construction worker and father of four boys. "Basically, he's a rubber stamp for [House speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate majority leader] Harry Reid. Anything that Reid and Pelosi want, he would go with along with it."
Both the GOP machine and tea-partyers look at Mr. Bishop as vulnerable in 2010 due to the recent anti-incumbent and anti-Democratic trend, the high Republican registration in the 1st Congressional District and the last election results: Mr. Bishop beat political newcomer Lee Zeldin with the second-lowest margin of victory among Democratic incumbent congressmen in the state, 58 percent.
There are already eight challengers hoping to face Mr. Bishop in November, and the number seems to grow by the day. Most have met with the Suffolk 9/12 and CSA groups.
"We're vetting these candidates and we'll try to get behind one of them, or maybe not just one of them but several, if a candidate who aligns with our principles can be found," said banker Richard Burns, 30, who heads the groups' efforts in Riverhead. "We're certainly going to lend our support and act as a ground campaign because it's evident that Tim Bishop is not really aligning with the values and principles of the group."
In recent weeks, Wild West-style signs that read "Not Wanted: Tim Bishop," along with his picture, have been popping up around the district. Though the Meyers said they knew who was behind the posters, they said it wasn't them. And they wouldn't name names.
Mr. Bishop declined to be interviewed for this story.
In a News-Review story covering last April's TEA Party in Riverhead, the congressman said he could understand people's frustration with the recklessness that led to the housing and Wall Street collapses, but he felt the TEA revelers were misinformed about perceived tax hikes.
"As we're sitting here in April 2009, 95 percent of Americans have gotten a tax cut thanks to this administration and Democrats in Congress, and not a single person has had a tax increase," the four-term congressman said.
Mr. Klein, the LIU professor, agreed that Mr. Bishop was probably more vulnerable than his 2nd Congressional District counterpart, Steve Israel.
Still, he said, he wouldn't bet against him.
"I don't think they're giving Bishop credit for the fact that his family goes back to colonial days," he said. "His ancestors were among the original settlers of the East End, way back in the 17th century. He's got a lot of friends out there, and relatives and acquaintances that are quite impressed with his lineage.
"And the DAR stick together. That's Daughters of the American Revolution."
mwhite@timesreview.com
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1 comments found
TEA Party : 3/5/2010
Honestly, shouldn't we hold our political leaders accountable for their jobs? Aren't we held accountable to ours? Shouldn't they be voting the way we want them to and, if they are not, shouldn't we be voting them out? It seems many people have forgotten that they hold the cards and just keep voting the same people in again and again. If you want change, you have to make change no matter what "party" you support. Too many of us just sit on the sidelines and hope things will change. If you do nothing, nothing will ever get done.
