Douglaston resident Dawn Anatra has been spending her nights and weekends going door-to-door and to supermarkets to talk to perspective voters about the November 2 election, sometimes even bringing incumbent candidates’ voting records with her.
But, Anatra is not a candidate for office or employed by one who is running. She is a Tea Party supporter, who is going around Queens and Nassau County talking to voters about the candidates and issues affecting their communities.
“I think they’re [voters] starting to say wow so much has gone on that I wasn’t aware of,” said Anatra, who first got involved with the New York organization TeaParty365 about two years ago.
In Queens, a borough where Democratic voters greatly outnumber Republican voters, a few Tea Party organizations have sprouted up including TeaParty365, Nassau-Queens County 9-12 Project and Conservative Society for Action (CSA). The organizations have been holding rallies and meetings throughout the past two years, preparing for the November 2 election where they have made incumbent Democratic Congressmember Gary Ackerman one of their top targets.
Phil Orenstein, a 62-year-old Queens Village resident, said he first got involved with Tea Party movements in Queens and Nassau County last year after finding himself “fed up with” spending in Congress, bailouts to the banks and Obama’s healthcare reform.
“We hope to send a very strong message to our elected officials – Ackerman and all the others – that they have to be accountable to us, the people,” Orenstein said. “They have to be accountable to the people they are serving in the community.”
Anthony Carollo, the president of the Whitestone Republican Club and Tea Party organizer who is running Dr. James Milano’s campaign against Ackerman, said more than 100 Tea Party supporters from Queens have been active with the campaign.
“The footwork is there,” said Carollo. “They’re reaching out to neighbors, friends, employees; they’re discussing why we have to get Dr. James Milano into Congress and get Gary Ackerman out.”
Meanwhile Evan Stavisky, a partner at the Parkside Group, which is managing a number of Democratic campaigns this year, said that in a county as diverse as Queens there are bound to be a number of Tea Party members, but he doubted whether they would be able to shift an election in such an overwhelmingly Democratic county.
He also said the Tea Party candidates do not have a monopoly on fiscal responsibility – the group’s number one issue – and that there are Republicans and Democrats who are fiscally irresponsible.
“The Tea Party claims that it’s built out of anger of fiscal irresponsibility, well some of their candidates such as [Christine] O’Donnell from Delaware and Carl Paladino prove there is a fine line between people who are mad at the economy and folks that are just stark raving mad,” Stavisky said.
