Latest Media Mentions
Latest Media Mentions
Talking Points Memo: Tea Party Leader launches PAC to back small government candidates
A leading Tea Party activist is launching a political action committee to back candidates who run on a limited-government platform — perhaps the most serious effort yet to to channel the Tea Partiers’ grassroots energy toward electoral politics.
Eric Odom, a conservative online organizer who played a key role in sparking the original Tea Party movement this spring, is unveiling Liberty First PAC. The goal, said Odom in an interview with TPMmuckraker, is to raise $1 million to defeat incumbents who supported health-care reform — which he called “very dangerous to the fabric of this country” — and to elect a new crop of lawmakers committed to small-government principles in 2010.
Odom said that the PAC would soon get involved in a race that has already been mentioned as a likely focus of conservative grassroots energy — by endorsing the conservative Marco Rubio over the more moderate Charlie Crist in the GOP primary for Florida governor. And Odom added that had the PAC existed, it would have gotten involved in the recent NY-23 primary, in support of conservative Doug Hoffman.
Odom pointed to MoveOn.org, which had early success targeting key electoral contests as a model for Liberty First. And he suggested that Tea Partiers had erred by focusing only on mobilizing grassroots pressure, and not getting actively involved in elections until now. “We think the Tea Party movement has lacked the initiative to get involved in the campaign side of politics,” said Odom.