{"id":294082,"date":"2010-02-08T15:48:10","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T20:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/?p=16971"},"modified":"2010-02-08T15:48:10","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T20:48:10","slug":"walsh-local-activists-center-stage-at-tea-party-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/294082","title":{"rendered":"Walsh, local activists center stage at Tea Party event"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As he campaigned for the Republican nomination in the suburban 8th House District, Joe Walsh’s mantra was he was “a tea party conservative first and a Republican second.”<\/p>\n

That approach – reaching out to voters who feel angry and disenfranchised by the U.S. government, especially the people who participated in tea party protests last year – worked for Walsh when he handily won the GOP nomination Feb. 2.<\/p>\n

It also earned him some attention this past weekend when he attended the National Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tenn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Walsh, of Winnetka, teamed with two activists in the tea party movement and a conservative blogger, all from Illinois, on Friday to talk about his campaign strategy and the tea party movement’s impact on the Illinois primaries.<\/p>\n

“I had a fairly receptive crowd,” Walsh recalled Monday. “They were incredibly curious to hear from me, how it felt to run and the things we did to win.”<\/p>\n

The other panelists were Bruce Donnelly, a Barrington tea party activist who runs a political Web site called surgeusa.org<\/a>, John Biver, the editor of championnews.net<\/a>, and Tim Kraulidis, who leads a Joliet tea party group.<\/p>\n

Because the Illinois primary was the nation’s first in 2010, Walsh claims the distinction of being the first tea party-backed candidate to win nomination this year.<\/p>\n

“They wanted a candidate’s perspective,” Walsh said of the audience.<\/p>\n

Walsh’s presentation wasn’t on the official convention schedule viewable at nationalteapartyconvention.com, nor was he listed as a featured speaker – although Biver, Kraulidis and Donnelly were featured on the Web site.<\/p>\n

Walsh said it was a breakout discussion. He estimated about 200 people attended the talk.<\/p>\n

Walsh admitted not getting as large a crowd as headline speaker Sarah Palin, the former Alaskan governor who was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, but he didn’t seem to mind.<\/p>\n

Walsh will face three-term Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean of Barrington and Green Party nominee Bill Scheurer of Lindenhurst in the November general election.<\/p>\n

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/img><\/a>
\n<\/img><\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As he campaigned for the Republican nomination in the suburban 8th House District, Joe Walsh’s mantra was he was “a tea party conservative first and a Republican second.” That approach – reaching out to voters who feel angry and disenfranchised by the U.S. government, especially the people who participated in tea party protests last year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}