COMMENTARY

“In advocating for so-called “limited government,” it would appear what the local Tea Party really has in mind is the election of candidates with limited knowledge, limited experience, and in at least one case, limited emotional intelligence.”

MARK SCHUMANN

With its mailing of a slick post this week, the Indian River Tea Party took sides the Vero Beach City Council election. The Tea Party’s message was a thinly disguised encouragement to voters to support Laura Moss, Harry Howle and Brian Heady, three challengers to incumbents Amelia Graves and Richard Winger.

The mailer focused on two issues, City’s recent tax increase and stalled efforts to sell Vero Electric, and claimed the answers could be found watching a video of a candidate forum the group sponsored Oct. 6.

During the Tea Party’s forum, however, the challengers offered no specific suggestions for cutting City services, and no practical proposal for resolving the City’s contractual obligations to the Florida Municipal Power Agency.

About Howle, the Press Journal editorial board recently wrote, “He lacks the experience Graves has gained the past two years. His candor makes it questionable whether he can work with other council members.”

The newspaper questioned Moss’ preparation for the job. “It’s hard to determine where Moss stands on key issues….she said she need to do more research.”

“Heady,” the editorial board wrote, “running for local elected office for the 18th time, is past his prime.”

In advocating for so-called “limited government,” it would appear what the local Tea Party really has in mind is the election of candidates with limited knowledge, limited experience, and in at least one case, limited emotional intelligence.

Indian River Tea Party – Political party or special interest group?

Editor’s note: First published August 31, 2013, the story below explores the motivations for the close alliance between the Indian River Tea Party and candidates pledged to sell, or more accurately, to sell-out to Florida Power & Light. My contention is that the local Tea Party is less a political party than it is a special interest group. Their true mission, I believe, is to pursue consolidation of local government, with the ultimate objective of securing more relaxed regulations on development. When the current contenders for two seats on the Vero Beach City Council file their final campaign finance reports, don’t be surprised to see significant contributions to Harry Howle and Laura Moss by builders, developers and landed interests, and indirectly, by FPL.

COMMENTARY

“Beyond the electric sale, which is dead but has yet to be buried, Turner, Howle and their libertarian supporters can be expected to push for consolidated local government. If these limited-government fundamentalists succeed is selling off public assets that make Vero Beach unique, and, more importantly, if they can force the city to disincorporate, the way will be clear for far more lucrative development.”

MARK SCHUMANN

According to the Supervisor of Elections’ office, as of August 30, 2013, only two voters in Indian River County were registered as members of the Tea Party, and their names are not ones you might think of in connection with the Indian River Tea Party, an organization which claims on its website the United States was never intended to be a democracy. While asserting the founding fathers established a republic, what this group really seems to have in mind is a plutocracy. 

The local Tea Party may have thrown a few big protest bashes since the 2008 presidential election, and the group may have thrown its weight behind the sale of Vero Electric to Florida Power & Light, but whatever the group is, it is hardly a political party. To be sure, there is a profound difference between throwing a party and being a party.

By definition, political parties, as compared to political movements, have registered, card-carrying members. Starting at the top, Toby Hill, head of the Indian River Tea Party, is not registered with the Office of the Indian River County Supervisor of Elections as a member of the Tea Party, nor are any of his loyal lieutenants.

If the leaders and members of the Indian River Tea Party want to be taken seriously as a political party, then they might at least consider joining their own “party,” rather than insisting the local Republican party should share power with them.

Not only is the Tea Party not a political party, per say, locally, it is not even a political movement.  Rather, the Indian River Tea Party is a special interest group largely controlled by builders and developers.

One page on the Indian River Tea Party’s website, coupling limitations on private property rights with Marxism, links readers to a white paper titled “The Right to Private Property,” written by Tibor R. Machan. Machan is research fellow with the conservative Hoover Institution and an adjunct scholar with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington D.C.

I have been accused of wrongly and unfairly asserting that the local Tea Party and the Taxpayers’ Association are so cross-pollinated and intertwined as to be virtually indistinguishable, if not redundant.  Yet, more than a few people with ties to and knowledge of both organizations have said my observations are on target.

If they share nothing else in common, the Indian River Tea Party and the Indian River Taxpayer’s Association speak from a common extremist-libertarian lexicon. Since language is both descriptive and generative, the virtually identical vocabulary used by leaders of these two groups is revealing.

While the two special interest groups may not make public statements or issue press releases calling for the dissolution of the City of Vero Beach as an independent municipality, both support and advocate policies that will inevitably have the effect of bankrupting the city, thus forcing it to disincorporate.

Take, for example, the County’s efforts to wrest from the City its water and sewer customers in Indian River Shores and on the south barrier island.  Glenn Heran, utility activist and former president of the Taxpayers’ Association, continues to foment discontent among the City’s south barrier island customers, as he repeats the tired, worn out, baseless charge that the City’s water and sewer customers outside the city limits are taxed without representation.  Heran’s oft-repeated Taxpayers’ Association themes about liberty, limited government and the efficient delivery of only essential services all appear on the Indian River Tea Party’s website as well.

Consider the following, which appears on the Indian River Tea Party’s website under the heading of “Community Issues.” “Beachside residents south of Castaway Cove – some of whom have been begging for years to be emancipated from the City of Vero Beach water-sewer system — could move a step closer to getting that wish fulfilled when the County Commission considers formal action on a major salvo in the ongoing utility war.”

To listen to representatives of the Taxpayers’ Association and the Tea Party, and to read their websites, you could easily get the impression they are standing in an echo chamber.

The Tea Party is forever asserting that many functions of government are not authorized by the Constitution.  But they fail to acknowledge that the Constitution is a living, breathing document, open both to interpretation and amendment

Notice that they did not raise so much as a whimper when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing unlimited corporate contributions to political campaigns, but they screamed bloody murder when the same Supreme Court upheld key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

A number of Tea Party leaders, including Hill, Karl Zimmermann and Chuck Mechling, are now circling the wagons in support of Vero Beach city council candidates Pilar Turner and Harry Howle, III. They insist their primary objective is to elect a city council majority willing to go to any length, at any cost, to find a way to hand Vero Electric over to Florida Power & Light.

Beyond the electric sale, which is dead but has yet to be buried, Turner, Howle and their libertarian supporters can be expected to push for consolidated local government. If these limited-government fundamentalists succeed is selling off public assets that make Vero Beach unique, and, more importantly, if they can force the city to disincorporate, the way will be clear for far more lucrative development.