Karen Hurd from the Hampton Roads Tea Party released the following statement about the race in Virginia’s 2nd district.
The Hampton Roads Tea Party was created to fight back an overreaching, corrupt, and obese government – at all levels. The Tea Party movement, including the Hampton Roads Tea Party holds both the Republicans and the Democrats accountable for the current state of the Nation.
The political elites are not listening to the people who pay their salaries. In 2010 we have an opportunity to send people who WILL listen and who know that they are obligated to the people – the voters – not to a political machine.
Initially, we had no intention of making any endorsement in the 2nd district congressional primary. However, we started getting calls and emails from our members asking, “who should we support?”, especially as they became aware of the frontrunner Scott Rigell’s donation to Obama and his past support for a sales tax increase and other issues which are deal breakers for many of our members.
(Note: see our article on our website)
As the Board of Directors of the Hampton Roads Tea Party, we felt an obligation and a responsibility to take a stand in a very crowded candidate field. By endorsing a candidate, we don’t presume to speak FOR our members, but rather TO our members. We know that each person’s vote is precious. We know that the “tea party vote” when focused on one candidate, has been shown to change elections and knock out even the most deeply entrenched candidates. We feel very strongly that “Republican political machine” in Hampton Roads needs to be defeated.
Throughout this primary season, we’ve been evaluating the candidates. As part of our process we reviewed each candidate’s donation history to campaigns, community activism and conducted an extensive interview. We watched the candidates at debates, and conducted a forum on April 1. After long deliberation and carefully evaluating each candidate in the second district many of whom are indeed conservatives, The HRTP Board of Directors is announcing our endorsement of Ben Loyola in the GOP Primary on June 8.
Ben has been supportive of the tea party movement almost since the beginning when he spoke at our Defend and Declare Tea Party in June 2009. He has signed the Tea Party Contract from America – a 10 point platform from the grassroots tea party to Congress. In our final interview lasting over 3 hours, the HRTP board grilled Ben on issues surrounding the Constitution, Limited Government and economics. We asked him about defense spending and defense cuts, congressional procedure, national security, tax reform, immigration reform, free market principals and the role of government. Ben is the only candidate advocating abolishing the IRS. Ben has an excellent depth of understanding of policy, is conversant with complex budgets, and is deeply committed to the Constitution. He is the most vocal advocate of across the board tax cuts and an immediate federal hiring freeze. We also feel that Ben’s personal experience as an immigrant and his professional expertise in border security brings a strong voice in this critical issue facing Americans today.
Clearly, each member of the tea party is able to choose for themselves. We encourage our members to take a hard look at Ben Loyola. We encourage you to get involved in his campaign. So far, this primary election is being dominated by money and the GOP establishment machine. We no longer want politics as usual – “may the man/woman with the most money win”. The Tea Party movement is seeking principled liberty oriented leadership. We feel that Ben Loyola is the candidate most able to defeat Glenn Nye and take tea party core values into Congress.
Thank you.
—-End of Remarks—-
Also at the Press Conference, Ben was endorsed by Robert Dean, co- founder of the Virginia Beach Taxpayers Alliance and Chair of the Tidewater Libertarian Party.
After Robert spoke, Doug Hutchinson announced that he was withdrawing from the race, and throwing his support behind Ben Loyola.
Ben’s website: http://benloyola.com
In Liberty-
Karen
