Energized by yesterday’s turnout of nearly 9,000 conservative activists in Sen. Harry Reid\u2019s hometown of Searchlight, Nev., The Tea Party Express hit the road Sunday for Arizona.<\/p>\n
Movement leaders say the message in the Copper State will be the same: fewer taxes, less government spending, and a repeal of the massive health care overhaul Obama signed into law last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just want our country back,\u201d said Mark Williams, vice chairman of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which is funding the Tea Party Express bus tour to 42 cities and 23 states.<\/p>\n
Arizona Sen. John McCain, who is seeking a fifth term in the U.S. Senate, is locked in a tight race against former conservative congressman and popular local radio host J.D. Hayworth.<\/p>\n
The tea party has so far been reluctant to endorse either candidate, but movement leaders told FoxNews.com on Sunday that Hayworth was likely their preferred choice.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, J.D. Hayworth probably has a bigger following,\u201d said Sal Russo, a Republican strategist from Sacramento, Calif, and chief strategist of the Tea Party Express.<\/p>\n
Russo said the movement has declined to make a formal endorsement largely because of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a tea party favorite who kicked off the bus tour in Searchlight with a speech calling for Reid and the Democrats to be \u201cfired.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCain has called on Palin, his running mate during the 2008 presidential election, to campaign for him in the months leading up to the Aug. 24th Arizona Senate primary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew Governor Palin would be campaigning there and so we didn\u2019t want to detract from her activities in any way,\u201d Russo said. \u201cWe\u2019re just trying to be respectful of her.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCain leads Hayworth by seven percentage points, according to a March 16 Rasmusson poll. The survey, which polled 541 likely voters in Arizona, found McCain with a 48 percent approval rating compared to Hayworth\u2019s 41 percent. Three percent of those surveyed said they preferred some other candidate, while eight percent said they were undecided. The poll had a margin of error of four percentage points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Energized by yesterday’s turnout of nearly 9,000 conservative activists in Sen. Harry Reid\u2019s hometown of Searchlight, Nev., The Tea Party Express hit the road Sunday for Arizona. Movement leaders say the message in the Copper State will be the same: fewer taxes, less government spending, and a repeal of the massive health care overhaul Obama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481988","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\/6475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}