Arizona Tea Party group raises $500k, buys Elvis commemorative plates, sponsors NASCAR, pays off Rent-A-Center, then disappears with $258k unspoken for

Tea Party Cartoon

 

Tea Party CartoonRoll Call’s Janie Lorber reports on mystery tea baggers TheTeaParty.net, an Arizona based Tea Party group that apparently raises money, promotes itself, and nothing else.

A little-known, Arizona-based tea party organization has hired a prominent Republican operative to help advance its mission in Washington, D.C. But after more than a year in operation and hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, it’s still not clear what the group’s mission actually is. […] Despite its extensive website and an impressive ability to pull in money, TheTeaParty.net appears to do little more than promote its own name.

When I saw this next quote, I couldn’t help but think of the scene in Office Space with the guy yelling at the Bobs ‘I have people skills!’

“We are not a normal tea party group that has meetings and things like that,” spokeswoman Vicki Dooling said. “We are a gatherer of other tea partyers.”

Since raising $500,000 from their members wasn’t enough, the group even goes as far as to sell their member’s email addresses to advertisers:

It appears that the organization also makes money off its mailing list. Emails obtained by Roll Call reveal that the group has rented its 200,000-person mailing list to companies such as Gold Rarities Gallery, an online gold and silver warehouse.
An advertising representative at Newsmax said he helps TheTeaParty.net find clients and confirmed that the list is available for $7,000 ($35 for every thousand names). Dooling said no personal information is released to third parties during the process.

It seems all this group does is attempt to perpetuate itself and send out emails demonizing Unions in Wisconsin. It seems tea baggers are tired of Washington wasting their money so they’re sending it to mysterious groups with no accountability instead.