Professional tea party cashes in
Activism, Headlines Monday, October 3rd, 2011
By KENNETH P. VOGEL | Politico
If you’ve got fundraising muscle, it pays to be tea party.
That’s the takeaway from recently released financial reports for five of the biggest conservative groups that latched onto the small-government movement.
The groups — Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, Leadership Institute and Tea Party Express – raised $79 million last year. That’s a 61 percent increase from their haul in 2009, when the tea party first started gaining traction, and an 88 percent increase over their tally in 2008, according to a POLITICO review of campaign reports and newly released tax filings.
And the two biggest groups — Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks — tell POLITICO they’re planning to raise and spend a whopping $156 million combined this year and next, laying the groundwork for what could be a massive tea party organizing push against Democrats and the occasional moderate Republican in 2012.
It’s an entirely different story for the ragtag local groups that form the heart of the tea party, which struggle to raise cash.
To read more, visit: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/64957.html
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