Tea Party Fights Off Political Hijackers

Is the Tea Party a grassroots movement, or is the Tea Party a political party?

That is the subject of a complaint filed in Federal Court by a group of tea party organizations fighting to preserve their brand name. The complaint also asked the court to order the registered Florida Political Tea Party to stop threatening them and their colleagues with trademark litigation.

One organization filing the complaint is the South Florida Tea Party. The group is organized as an IRS 501c4 tax status organization, meaning that under the law it operates not as a political party, but rather as an organization to promote social welfare. The group was created in April 2009, well ahead of the political group that uses the same Tea Party moniker in its name, which did not register with the state of Florida until August of 2009.

According to Wilkinson, chairman of the South Florida Tea Party, the political version of the Tea Party is causing confusion and hurting the “tea party movement” through the unjust use of the “Tea Party” name. In December, it appeared the conflict between the two groups was over, because political Tea Party founder Fred O’Neal wrote a letter to Wilkinson’s lawyer that stating, “I’m going to leave you and your client alone,” and went on to say, “I won’t make any more attempts to try to communicate with your client”. However, according Tea Party Leaders, O’Neal has continued to admonish them to not use the Tea Party name.

“My colleagues and I believe the identity of the Florida Tea Party has been hijacked by cynical forces,” South Florida Tea Party chairman Everett Wilkinson said. “We are especially concerned the group is improperly leveraging the tea party movement to support the gubernatorial campaign of Sen. Paula Dockery.”

Furthermore, Wilkinson also noted that the founders of the political Tea Party group have been never active in nor affiliated with any tea party group.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the media has failed to draw a clear distinction between the two groups, as for example a November 9 CBS New article titled “The “Tea Party” Is Now Official in Florida”, that failed to distinguish between the original Tea Party movement and the newly formed

Also, according to Wilkinson, officers of the new political tea party have threatened to run third party candidates against both Republicans and Democrats, despite the fact that longtime Tea Party activists in the Sunshine State are working toward reform within the Republican and Democratic Parties and view third party candidacies as county-productive.

Other Tea Partiers and conservative activists have expressed concern that O’Neal and Doug Guetzloe (a political operative and associate of O’Neal) could potentially run an extortion game against state Republicans based on threats to run to run third party candidates who leverage off the good will of Floridians to the Tea Party brand name.

South Florida Tea Party took the lead in Press coverage has been a source of controversy since the first small Tea Parties were held last February, when organizers complained that media outlets ignored their events or sent reporters whose coverage was openly hostile to the agenda of the Tea Party