Tea Party Group Behind Saturday’s Gun Rallies Under Fire
On Saturday, gun rights advocates will be organizing at least 121 rallies across the country in a “day of resistance” to President Obama’s gun violence prevention proposals. But some tea party activists are questioning the credentials of the group organizing the rallies, a Mesa, Arizona-based outfit called theteaparty.net that’s been criticized as a data-harvesting operation designed to vacuum up contact information and credit card numbers from unsuspecting and largely clueless conservative activists. They’ve complained that the group raises tons of money under the tea party name but doesn’t spend much to further the movement, and they’re skeptical of its move into the gun debate.
Robin Stublen, a Florida tea party activist and gun owner, is suspicious of the Day of Resistance event. “All my life I have been around guns of some sort,” he says. “Some are truly works of art. I respect them. I would never think of using them as the next political toy to make a fast buck. I seriously doubt if any of these so-called ‘leaders’ could tell the business end of a gun, let alone take them apart and clean them. They are opportunists and should be ignored.”
theteapary.net was founded by Todd Cefaratti, an Arizona man who is the CEO of a “lead generation” company for the reverse-mortgage industry and who has inserted himself into tea party politics in recent years. In 2011, theteaparty.net sponsored a truck at NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series, and it made a big splash by sponsoring a tea party “unity rally” at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, last year. It’s been a sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference in DC this year and last, raising its profile among conservative activists.
More: Tea Party Group Behind Saturday’s Gun Rallies Under Fire