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Launch of North Dakota Tea Party causes stir

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The recent launch of the North Dakota Tea Party Caucus has caused a stir in the state’s political establishment, with Republicans expressing hope of cooperation with the fledgling group and with Democrats saying it’s a sign of discord among the Republican ranks.

While Democratic and Republican leaders have different ideas about how the Tea Party Caucus will influence state politics, the group’s founders said the goal is to promote fiscal responsibility and smaller government to a greater degree than the two main political parties.

“The Democrats, most of them, aren’t voting the way we’d like them to, and the Republicans aren’t voting the way we’d want them to,” said Mike Motschenbacher, one of the North Dakota Tea Party’s founders. “So there’s really nowhere to turn.”

The founders of the Tea Party Caucus said the group is for people who believe other political parties are not properly representing them. They want to focus on fiscal issues rather than social issues, and they maintain the group is not a third party. However, critics said the Tea Party Caucus has broken ranks with the North Dakota Republican Party to push its own agenda.

Joe Aronson, executive director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party, said the formation of the Tea Party Caucus revealed a deep rift within the Republican Party.

“Our folks aren’t splintering off to start whole new groups,” Aronson said. “Debating issues is good, but when you have a group that wants to start their own, they have some problems over there.”

Stan Stein, the chairman of the North Dakota Republican Party, said he has worked with many of the members of the Tea Party Caucus, though he was unsure about how much cooperation there will be between Republicans and Tea Party members.

“I am just waiting to see how it all unfolds, and hopefully we can work together,” Stein said. “The ideas are so intertwined, I see no reason that we can’t work together.”

The Tea Party Caucus was organized by a variety of activists, political veterans, and new faces to politics that have joined the conservative movement in North Dakota during the past two years. The 20 members of the organizing committee include familiar names from North Dakota politics, specifically from the state Republican Party.

Duane Sand, a founding member of the Tea Party Caucus, has run unsuccessful campaigns as a Republican for the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. He said the launch of the Tea Party Caucus on April 12 was the result of differences with the Republican Party on fiscal issues, not social issues.

Motschenbacher said state spending has increased 10 percent annually during the last eight years while the North Dakota Legislature was under Republican control.

Those complaints about overspending come at a time when North Dakota is among only four states in the Union with a budget surplus – the others are Alaska, Arkansas and Montana.

But the Tea Party Caucus also is interested in promoting fiscal conservative candidates for federal offices. Bob Harms, a founding member of the Tea Party Caucus and the treasurer of the North Dakota Republican Party, said the growing national debt presents very real threats to our national security and needs to be curbed.

“Most people in this country realize the national debt is a serious problem, and we need to make sure to elect members of Congress who will do something about it,” Harms said.

The Tea Party Caucus’ goals as stated on its website are: to provide opportunities for the development of an informed electorate, to move toward primary challengers against incumbents, to create a statewide organization with local chapters, to collaborate with national Tea Party organizations without formal affiliations, and to commit to honorable conduct and fiscal responsibility.

Sand said there’s power in numbers if there is a common mission. He said many of the founding members of the Tea Party Caucus are still participating in the Republican Party and plan to continue.

“I don’t think it’s a splintering of the Republican Party,” Sand said. “We want the Republican Party to follow its party platform: less government, lower taxes. We simply want to try to influence, in various ways, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.”

Sand said the organizers come from varied backgrounds, and says founding member Perry Schumacher “is as close to an independent as you can get.” Other founding members include Robert Harms, treasurer of the North Dakota Republican Party; Gary Emineth, former chairman of the state GOP; and Motschenbacher, who ran for office in Bismarck as a Republican.

Motschenbacher said the group doesn’t want to be an organization where people look for leadership. The Tea Party Caucus, he said, will adhere to a “bottom up” structure, as opposed to a top-down structure.

Anyone who participates in the Tea Party Caucus will be free to speak on behalf of the group, Motschenbacher said. They are allowed to recruit, spread the word, get involved and conduct media interviews, as long as they stick to the five basics of the charter. If they sway from the charter, they will be disbanded.

“The GOP and DFL have principles, but there are no requirements or ramifications for straying from the charter principles,” Motchenbacher said.

The organizers of the Tea Party Caucus said the group has grown to more than 1,200 members and continues to search for like-minded people. They want to eventually have a presence in every community in the state. 

Motschenbacher said he has heard about Democrats who have contacted the caucus asking to get involved. He said the group welcomes anyone who is frustrated with the existing system.

Motschenbacher said the Tea Party Caucus is not a wing of the Republican Party. “We are not going to try to merge into the Republican Party,” he said. “If you want to state what we are, a voting bloc would be a better analogy.”

Aronson, the director of the state Democratic-NPL Party, disagreed with the notion that the Tea Party Caucus is simply a voting bloc. He said the group’s charter states it wants to fundraise and start local chapters, which are functions of a political party. He said he has not heard of a single Democrat lining up to join the Tea Party Caucus.

“Maybe that’s the one piece of common ground we have – that I don’t like the Republican leadership either,” Aronson said.

Nationally, frustration over healthcare reform two years ago set off the Tea Party movement. North Dakota’s first Tea Party rally was held at the front steps of the Federal Courthouse in Bismarck on April 15, 2009.

-McCurdy is a freelance writer for the Great Plains Examiner. Connect with her online at www.SarahMcCurdy.net.

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