The TEA Party is NOT a 3rd Party: For Immediate Release

The TEA Party is NOT a 3rd Party

Since the beginning of the TEA Party movement activists have been adamant about the fact that we will not become an official political Party. Some in the movement do not get this fact or simply choose to ignore the majority, and do it anyway. People who do, do not understand the importance and clearly do not understand the mindset of people in the TEA Party movement. We are NOT a “Party,” we are a movement.  Thousands of TEA Party groups across the country understand this and have been against the use of the word TEA Party on ballots for the purpose of electing candidates into public office.

The Jack Davis Campaign for Congress in New York’s 26th District has chosen to ignore this majority opinion and they have created a TEA Party line. I sat at a coffee shop with Jack Davis last night, Thursday March 24th, and explained this problem to him. Jack has been getting advice from Allen Coniglio and James Ostrowski who are members of a rogue tea party group that are determined to create a 3rd party. A little over a year ago they attempted to convince the TEA Party groups in Western New York that a 3rd party was needed and their Tea Party Coalition was the path. We all disagreed, and because of this and other unresolved conflict, we walked away wanting nothing to do with this.

Just a year ago, Curtis Ellis penned an opinion piece that described tea party members as “self-absorbed, privileged children.” Today, Ellis is the chief spokesman and campaign manager for Jack Davis.  “The tea party is a harbinger of midlife crisis, not political crisis,” Ellis wrote in a Feb. 24, 2010, opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times titled “Most ‘tea party’ followers are baby boomers reliving the ’60s.” See article http://www.rollcall.com/news/-204295-1.html?zkPrintable=true …

We are now in the midst of a real problem. We have no personal issues with Jack and feel everyone has the right to run for office. The main problem here is that there is NO primary, and we must consider the problems created by “splitting the line.”  This is a 3rd party run using the TEA Party as a road to get into office. We are dead set against the use of the name. We don’t own the name, no one does.  Yet people understand and respect the people in the movement. By continuing on this crusade, the Davis campaign is insulting the very people he claims to want to lead and represent. I respectfully ask Jack to get out of this race as now it is too late to change the name. His advisers and campaign manager are trying to pull a power play for self aggrandizement and power. This will not be tolerated by the people involved in the TEA Party movement.

Thank you
Rus and Jul Thompson
http://TEANewYork.com