Sunken tea party blamed on planner

The leader of a local Tea Party group is blaming the cancellation of a planned three-day conference on the event planner he hired. Tea Party Support, a conservative group that splintered from another Tea Party organization late last year, hoped to make a big splash with the National Conservative Symposium, a conference scheduled for Jan. 22-24 at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa. The speaker list included former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, television host Sean Hannity and radio and television analyst Laura Ingraham. Texas Gov. Rick Perry also committed to appear on the event's final day to introduce Palin. But the event crumbled less than a month after it was announced, with Tea Party Support pulling the plug on the conference late last week. Matt Perdue, president of Tea Party Support, alleges that event planner Jennifer Ramirez-Jasiczek diverted registration payments from a PayPal account designated for the conference into one for her own personal use. Ramirez-Jasiczek disputes Perdue's allegations and says she quit working on the event on Dec. 31 because Tea Party Support was behind in its payments to her. “I worked tirelessly planning the event so that it would be a success,” she said. “Unfortunately, I have still not been compensated for the time and effort I put into it.”...read more