Leaders of Tea Party and Indivisible share passion, patriotism and tactics

Shortly after President Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, a group of citizens fed up with big government and excessive spending started a modern day Tea Party movement aimed at stopping a liberal political agenda.

In the midterm of 2010, that Tea Party energy translated into votes. Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House of Representatives, the biggest wave election in at least a half century.

In 2016, shortly after Donald Trump was elected, people on the other side of the political spectrum formed the Indivisible Project, a grassroots movement aimed at defeating the Trump agenda in favor of more progressive policies and leaders.

To make that goal happen, Indivisible leaders borrowed some ideas from the Tea Party playbook — using on-the-ground outreach in everything from voter registration to helping people get to polls, small meet-up groups to maintain focus and discuss strategy, and plenty of emotion-driven enthusiasm at public events to rally voters toward their cause.

With the midterm election looming, Democrats are hoping Indivisible’s efforts also will translate into votes.

To get an idea of what both groups expect on Nov. 6 — and what they might have in common — we talked with Jenny Beth Martin, chief executive officer and co-founder of the national Tea Party Patriots, and Jiggy Athilingam, California state and local policy manager at the Indivisible Project.

Q: How would you gauge excitement among voters?

ATHILINGAM: I can speak more on the progressive base, but can tell you that all indications point to a huge surge of excitement… Midterms are known to be less exciting… but I think the progressive base really understands the importance of turning out to vote this year, more so than they have in the past.

They’re watching what’s been happening in the federal government for the past almost two years and with the Supreme Court nominee (Brett Kavanaugh). They now see this is their chance to really put a check on the Republican controlled federal government….

MARTIN: (Tea Party) excitement for the 2018 midterm is increasing almost exponentially daily. I think that the energy, enthusiasm and concern about the direction of our country has been highlighted dramatically with the hearings about Brett Kavanaugh over the past couple of weeks, and we’ve seen an increase in requests for activism. Right now, we have more volunteers than we have supplies.

What we’re seeing in the last few weeks, the importance of the Supreme Court is highlighted yet again. But on top of that, we’re looking at the foundational principals of our country being challenged; innocence until proven guilty and due process… Right now, what’s happening is more visceral and it’s emotional because (voters) are thinking, ‘Wait a minute. This can happen to me. It can happen to my son. It can happen to my husband. It can happen to my father. It can happen to my good friend who happens to be a man.’

For our organization, we are working to get the 2016 only Trump voters back out to the polls. We’ve identified 6.5 million of those voters in 85 different congressional and senate races, and we’re working to urge them to get back out and vote again.

Q: What is the challenge facing Tea Party groups and conservative voters living in purple counties, such as San Bernardino County, or in blue areas of the country like in the Los Angeles area? Is it worth sticking it out and fighting, or should they move to more conservative parts of the country? Conversely, what are the challenges facing Indivisible members in red areas of the country?

MARTIN: I think that as far as staying or leaving, a lot of times that winds up coming down to how the political policies are turned into legislation and how that ultimately affects an individual and a family’s pocket book… If it is preventing them from having the economic freedom and opportunity that they want in their life, they’re going to wind up moving where they can have a better life. That’s something that we’ve seen play out in California and in other states around the country…

With that said, the people who are living in these purple and deep blue areas of the country, sometimes they’ll say to me that they’re just so frustrated, they feel alone, they’re not represented, and their members of Congress and even local elected officials just don’t listen to them. I urge those people to continue to stay involved and to make their voices heard even if they’re not getting the response that they want.

Often times when the opposition is so in your face, which has happened especially in Hollywood and LA, it silences speech and I think that is not what we want. I live in an area of Georgia that’s the exact opposite of that. It’s a very, very conservative and Republican county and we have people who disagree with us, but they certainly, I don’t think, would come back and say they’re shamed into silence. They’re still part of our community. I think in California, especially, people who are conservative are treated much differently.

ATHILINGAM: It’s amazing to meet the (Indivisible) groups that are in really red districts. So many of them will say ‘We didn’t realize there were other progressives here’ and now they have this new home for activism. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about building community… They realize that they’re not alone in these really red districts. Building the progressive infrastructure that hasn’t existed in certain places before has a real possibility of revolutionizing things in redder areas.

We talk a lot about the Ozark Arkansas Indivisible… They are in North West Arkansas and they are a very, very strong Indivisible group. That’s one example, but our groups in Alabama were extremely active during the Doug Jones election in December.

Q: Since your group’s formation, how would you describe its influence on American politics? Where have they affected change?

ATHILINGAM: It’s been honestly so beautiful to watch the Indivisible movement and, in general, the progressive movement, and how it’s risen to the occasion because of the catastrophe that’s happening in this country.

We’ve been involved in really critical policy fights, worked on the (Affordable Care Act) repeal, worked on the Virginia elections and Virginia Medicaid, and groups have dabbled in different types of political activism over the past two years.

But I think the most beautiful thing about the whole movement is not necessarily the wins…  but just watching the constituency of America be engaged and come in to the political process in a way they haven’t been before.

Democracy only works if people are engaged in it.

MARTIN: I think it’s important to remember that really, the reason we started (the Tea Party) is because (CNBC on-air editor) Rick Santelli lit a match under us…. The rant he had on CNBC, which we all responded to, talked about how our founding fathers would be turning over in their graves over the Stimulus bill that was moving through (Congress). That was just a few months after (the Troubled Asset Relief Program), under President (George W.) Bush. But, our founding fathers would be turning over in their graves. We needed to have a Tea Party like they had.

We’re holding the torch of freedom right now, but we didn’t start the Tea Party movement. We’re just continuing it the same way our forefathers did.

So over the last decade, we’ve accomplished things and we still have more to do, but what I would say is the values we care about and the issues we fought for are largely the campaign issues that President Trump made central to his campaign….

The way Trump summed it up was so perfect; it was ‘draining the swamp.’ The swamp is the establishment of both parties, and he’s fighting against that. And that’s what we were fighting against as well… We’re still fighting the swamp.

Q: Martin, would you say the election of Trump is a Tea Party Success?

MARTIN: Our organization endorsed Ted Cruz in the primary. We did endorse Donald Trump when we got to the General Election, and we made two million phone calls and sent 100,000 cases of personalized mail to get out the vote in Pennsylvania and other states to help him win. We did more than 1 million phone calls in Pennsylvania in 2016. So yes, it is a success for the Tea Party movement.

Q: Athilingam, how is the Indivisible movement capitalizing on President Donald Trump?

ATHILINGAM: I think Trump’s actions are motivating people by themselves. Just his election caused the biggest march in our country, and a movement that sprung up out of nowhere.

When Indivisible first started, our founders put out this guide that was supposed to be a document to give people advice on how to engage in Democracy. And we saw this giant movement bubble up. That wasn’t us capitalizing on anything; that was an original thing that happened because people are outraged and know this isn’t the country they believe in. (They’re) standing up for the values they believe in.

It’s really President Trump that’s galvanizing the base of progressive voters because people are outraged and… don’t want to be complicit when our democracy is being torn down around them.

Q: Martin, how has the Tea Party movement changed over the past 10 years?

MARTIN: Quite dramatically. You can protest, and there are times when you feel like the only thing you can do is protest, and express yourself. And that’s the only way you can be engaged civically because your values are not in the majority.

That happened to us back in 2009. But we realized that in order to actually have the change that we wanted, we were going to have to win elections. So we worked on elections. And then we made sure we didn’t just go away and say ‘Oh well, now that they’re elected, we can go back to life as usual.’ We kept holding their feet to the fire…

The other thing is that we’ve found that there are still a lot of groups that are very, very active…. We’ve provided them with tools so that… they can take action right there and take action individually…

Some of the actions that we take are a little bit different today than they were in the beginning. That is largely because we went from being completely in the minority to being the majority in congress. And with a Republican President, Donald Trump, in the White House, you go from defense to offense.

Q: Athilingam, with the Tea Party now approaching its 10 year anniversary, do you see the Indivisible movement having a long lasting presence in American politics, too? Are there any similarities?

ATHILINGAM: Yes, I absolutely think so. It’s interesting because the Tea Party was actually pretty small. There weren’t nearly as many people that were party of the Tea Party movement as are part of the Indivisible and broader progressive movement, yet they were able to do a lot. And it’s because they had good tactics.

They were locally organized, they worked on pressuring their own elected representatives and holding them accountable. That’s part of where Indivisible actually came from. Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, who wrote the (Indivisible) guide, were congressional staffers during the rise of the Tea Party. And while what the Tea Party stands for is not everything we agree with, we’re strategically similar in their tactics…

The reason I think this has the possibly of being long lasting is that when we talk to different groups, they might say they came to Indivisible because of Trump, but they’ve stayed because of the community it brought into (their) life. People come to Indivisible and want to do something because of the trash fire that’s happening in the federal government.