Tea Party Convention Loses Sponsor Following ‘Whistleblower’ Blog Post

The former webmaster of Tea Party Nation, the group sponsoring next month’s National Tea Party convention at Opryland, has written a “whistleblower’s” account of his experience working with the group while it was in its embryonic stages. And what he reveals apparently has led a key tea party leader to remove his group from the sponsor list. In a post on his personal blog, In Media Res, Kevin Smith, an owner of the web design company HearSAY, writes that Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips took advantage of his volunteer computer experience in the creation of Tea Party Nation’s web architecture and profited from the enterprise. Meanwhile, Smith says that after he left the group, Phillips threatened to call the TBI and other authorities, saying Smith was responsible for crashing the Tea Party Nation website, a charge Smith denies. Smith writes that every single one of the members from the tea party planning group followed him out the door after he resigned...read more