Austin and Waco got good coverage on our local news..I think the number in Waco was larger than expected.
Great coverage of last night’s Tea Party Express in this morning’s Waco Tribune Herald. Very good crow, second largest so far! District 17 appreciates the support in our attempt to unseat Chet Edwards. Good luck with the wheels.
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/09/04/09042009wacTeaParty.html
By Anita Pere Tribune-Herald staff writer
Friday, September 04, 2009
The Tea Party Express national tour drew the attention of Fox News Channel and an estimated crowd of more than 2,000 people when it stopped in Waco on Thursday afternoon.
Mark Williams, vice chairman of the Tea Party Express and a radio talk show host, said the Waco event had more supporters than any other tour stop, excluding the tour’s send-off rally Aug. 28 in Sacramento, Calif.
Tea Party Express, a bus tour traveling the country to rally opposition to high taxes, government spending and growth in the size of the government, arrived about 5 p.m. at Indian Spring Park in downtown Waco.
Waco Tea Party member Greg Jones, who said he plans to attend the tour’s culminating event, a Sept. 12 protest in Washington, D.C., said the tea party movement is all about fiscal responsibility, constitutional government and free enterprise.
Toby Walker, president of the Waco Tea Party, said the Tea Party Express chose Waco for a stop to help rally voters to unseat U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco.
“The Tea Party Express targeted 30 or 35 cities across the country that had congressmen in those districts that were high-taxes spenders and that were a close race in the last election cycle,” she said. “That’s why Waco was selected.”
John Wayne impersonator Gene Howard, a native of Bryan, kicked things off with a reading of his poem, “Son, Do You See Old Glory Flying Up There,” then led the crowd in the pledge of allegiance.
Later, citizen Bobby Keith spoke his mind.
“Our representatives are calling us an angry mob. Well, we are angry,” he said.
Keith won the right to speak at Thursday’s rally at a Waco Tea Party event on Independence Day, Walker said.
The most common concerns presented at the rally were government spending and the pending health care legislation.
Tea Party backers at the rally overwhelmingly opposed House Bill 3200, a proposed solution to health care woes that includes a public health insurance option.
“This health care plan, it’s going to drive us to bankruptcy,” Waco resident James Phillips said. “I heard Chet say the other day, ‘These people don’t represent, you know, everybody in my district.’ I think he’s turning a blind eye, and he’s going to get voted out of office if he don’t change his ways.”
Voting big-spending legislators out of Washington was a rampant theme at the event.
“2010 is coming, and we’re going to hand them a pink slip,” said Deborah Johns, vice chairwoman of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC and a speaker with the Tea Party Express.
The Waco Friends of Peace staged a counterprotest at the event. The dozen or so people who showed up stood in the middle of University-Parks Drive with a huge sign that read “Health care 4 all.”
Crawford resident Harrison Ward, with Waco Friends of Peace, wondered why Tea Party supporters weren’t vocal about increased government spending during the Bush administration.
“These folks seem to be really concerned about creating a lot of debt, but I want to know where they were the last eight years, when a great deal of debt was being established and the tax base was being destroyed at the same time,” Ward said.
Alan Northcutt of Waco Friends of Peace said he supports a public option for health care.
“We’ve got the best physicians in the world, and we’ve got the best technology. The problem is access,” Northcutt said. “We have 40 million Americans who don’t have health care insurance, and in a rich country like this, that’s morally unacceptable to us. There needs to be a public option, preferably a single-payer system.”
Griff Jenkins covered the rally for Fox News. Sean Hannity’s show “Hannity” and “On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren broadcast scenes from the Tea Party demonstration Thursday evening on Fox News.
Staff writer Tim Woods contributed to this story.