Politics & Government

Tea Party Patriots Launch Elk Grove Chapter

Founder says the Elk Grove branch of the politically-influential conservative group will likely run candidates for local office.

The group that helped sweep Republicans to power in the House of Representatives last year has come to Elk Grove.

Conservative activists held their third meeting of the new Tea Party Patriots Elk Grove chapter at the earlier this week, touting the group’s principles of bare-bones government and free-market capitalism.

Co-founder Barbara Sloan works as a tax collector for the state of California, but says, “Most people are pretty outraged at how high our taxes are.”

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Nationally, the loosely-organized, politically-influential Tea Party movement encompasses everyone from right-wing members of Congress to conspiracy theorists who question whether President Barack Obama is a United States citizen.  Political commentators have debated whether the Tea Party Patriots are a true grassroots group, or simply the well-funded pet project of conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch.

Tea Party Patriots leaders this week criticized the budget deal legislators cut to avoid a federal government shutdown as a “hollow victory”; they’d wanted over $60 billion in cuts rather than the $38.5 billion legislators approved.

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Sloan said she got involved in politics because she was concerned about excessive spending by the federal government on bank bailouts and economic stimulus. She went to a leadership conference in Sacramento last December where Tea Party Patriots staff trained her on starting a local chapter.

The Elk Grove group hopes to make presentations in schools about the United States Constitution and eventually run candidates for local office, she said. About 50 members have signed up to attend a Tea Party rally at Cal Expo this Saturday, where they’ll sing patriotic songs and hear actors reenact speeches from the country’s founding fathers.

“It’ll be a great family event,” Sloan said.


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