5 Professional Tea Partiers: Who's Sucking the Most Money From the Movement?

[Playinghardball]

Source: AlterNet
By Adele M. Stan

These five Tea Party leaders are nicely compensated for leading the allegedly leaderless movement.

It was supposed to be the most low-to-the-ground of grassroots movements, a spontaneous uprising, the story goes, of ordinary, fed-up Americans who, on their own time and with nothing more than a Google Groups listserv put together a national political juggernaut. Whatever the grassroots bona fides of local Tea Party groups, the national movement is in many ways the creation of well-compensated Republican political operatives and consultants. This week, they added one more to their ranks, when Judson Phillips, who founded Tea Party Nation, announced he would leave his law practice and draw a salary instead from his Tea Party group, as Roll Call reported.

When we looked at leaders of the best-known Tea Party groups, we found most making a rather handsome living off the ostensibly salt-of-the-earth movement. And despite the Tea Party mantra that women run the movement, we found that two of the best-known female faces of the movement -- Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots -- earn rather modest salaries in comparison with their male colleagues. While Sal Russo, principal of Tea Party Express, raked in more than $800,000 during the 2010 election cycle from Tea Party Express for his public relations and media companies, Amy Kremer, the Express' director of grassroots and coalitions, earned a mere $49,000 during the same period, despite the fact that she often represents Tea Party Express at rallies and in the media. Meanwhile, Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, the successful organization founded by FreedomWorks, takes in $72,000 a year, a middling level of compensation when compared with the six-figure salaries reaped by FreedomWorks' male leaders.


More at: http://www.alternet.org/news/150902/5_professional_tea_partiers%3A_who%27s_sucking_the_most_money_from_the_movement

[Raven]

1. Those guys have to support their families, don't ya know. n/t

[Old and In the Way]

2. Co-opted by the Republican Kochsuckers

Glad to see a detailed overview that corroborates what we already knew. Just another skinning of the rubes.

[Name removed]

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