The Tea Party in Local Politics Jeffrey M. Berry Department of Political

The Tea Party in Local Politics

Jeffrey M. Berry Department of Political Science Tufts University

Kent E. Portney Bush School of Government and Public Service Texas A&M University

Robert Joseph Department of Political Science Tufts University

Paper prepared for delivery at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August, 2014. © American Political Science Association. Corresponding author: [email protected] or @JeffreyMBerry

The Tea Party in Local Politics

Abstract

Since 2009 the Tea Party has disrupted and deeply influenced American politics. The force of the movement has been felt not only in the three election cycles since then, but also in the development of public policy. One area where Tea Party influence has been said to be significant is in the area of environmental sustainability. As local governments have moved toward adopting environmental measures aimed at promoting sustainability, there have been some cases where local Tea Parties have emerged as aggressive and strident opponents of related policy changes. How widespread this behavior has been is unclear. In this paper we look broadly at the Tea Party movement across the country and systematically assess its influence in urban America. Based on evidence we’ve gathered for a number of different databases, we find that the Tea Party has not had a measurable impact on city policymaking in the area of sustainability. Moreover, we find that local Tea Party chapters generally have very limited organizational capacity to engage in advocacy. Across 50 large American cities, our findings indicate that the typical Tea Party chapter is at best a modest presence in local politics.

The Tea Party in Local Politics

At an October, 2013 open meeting held to discuss environmental and sustainability planning for the city of Watertown, Massachusetts, the assembled residents were divided into five breakout groups. One dealt with transportation issues and when the session leader mentioned that some parking spots may need to be eliminated to accomplish the city’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, a conservative activist responded that “roads were built for cars and cars are what made America what it is. Government shouldn’t take away our rights, which is our automobiles.” His demeanor suggested that this position was non-negotiable—under no circumstances should Watertown pursue steps aimed at promoting environmental protection that violated constitutional (if not biblical) principles.

Over the course of our research, we’ve heard many such stories and read about similar incidents at a variety of open meeting venues. As we’ll detail below, concern has mounted among environmentalists, planners, government officials, developers, and others over the attack by conservative activists on proposals aimed at promoting sustainability. This has been particularly worrisome at the local level where government is most permeable and participatory opportunities for rank-and-file citizens are most open.

Here we explore the attack on sustainability efforts in local politics. Drawing on a comprehensive inventory of environmental protection programs in 50 American cities, separate surveys of city councilors, agency administrators, and interest group leaders in those 50 cities, and elite interviews with heads of local Tea Parties in many of the same cities, we systematically examine the presence and impact of conservative activism aimed at blocking sustainability initiatives. We proceed by first articulating the reasons underlying our focus on sustainability planning, our choice of city governments as our testing ground, and our selection of Tea Party organizations as a window into the conservative critique of sustainability. With this foundation in hand we then discuss what we know about the Tea Party in relation to city politics and more fully develop the lines of inquiry to be followed in the data analysis. After describing the various databases we draw on, we then test a number of different conjectures concerning the Tea Party, city government, and sustainability.

Cities and Sustainability In the pages that follow we tie together many lines of research involving sustainability and environmental protection, public policymaking, and citizen advocacy to the changing nature of American cities. But why cities? We certainly do not argue that our questions are best answered in cities rather than at the state, national, or international level. Surely, the optimum approach would be a comprehensive analysis of all such arenas. What we do argue, though, is that cities offer some unique opportunities for understanding how environmentalism is advanced (or not), and how citizen lobbies affect policymaking.

Without offering a full review of city-level sustainability and environmentalism, let us note that a central reason why we chose an urban focus is because within the United States cities have become leaders in pursuing sustainability. It is not only liberal cities like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco that are well known for their aggressive pursuit of sustainability policies and programs. Rather, those high in the sustainability rankings include a broad range of cities, such

2 as Chattanooga, Jacksonville, and Charlotte. (Portney, 2013).1 Operating within the resource constraints common today in urban America, cities have forged ahead to try to protect the environment while at the same time promoting economic development. In contrast, sustainability initiatives at the state and national levels have been stifled by political opposition. The Republican Party has been especially hostile toward steps aimed at combating global climate change, even cap and trade, a market-based approach initially developed by conservative economists.

In contrast to national politics, city politics offers dramatically different political divisions. Demographically, of course, large American cities present a sharp contrast to the broader American population. Atlanta is in Georgia but Atlanta politics and Georgia politics orbit in different solar systems. One of the most profound differences between cities and the state and national levels is that the urban business sector is decidedly more progressive. Largely due to the decline of manufacturing and the demographic transformation of cities, local business leaders are much more responsive to concerns ignored or even fought by business groups in Washington. Our research demonstrates that local business groups are far more sympathetic to sustainability initiatives than their state and national counterparts. These local business leaders recognize the importance of greening their cities; they also understand how sustainability can lead to broader economic development.

It’s easy to equate “environmental protection” with “sustainability.” Although there is a great deal of overlap, the focus here is specifically on sustainability. The most widely accepted definition, as found in the 1987 report of the Brundtland Commission, holds that sustainable development consists of economic activity that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, 8). In such a world current generations are obligated to work to eliminate or mitigate various forms of pollution, global climate change, and other manifestations of environmental degradation. The ways in which this philosophy is turned into practice involves a wide range of programs and policies designed to diminish our collective footprint through regulation, exhortation, and technological advancements.

There is great optimism on cities’ potential for spearheading a movement to a sustainable future. Some European cities, for example, have implemented ambitious and impressive smart growth strategies (Fitzgerald, 2010). The much revered Brundtland Commission noted that “local authorities usually have the political power and credibility to take initiatives and to assess and deploy resources in innovative ways reflecting unique local conditions. This gives them the capacity to manage, control, experiment, and lead urban development” for the good of the environment (WCED, 1987, 242). In turn, mayors and other local leaders have mobilized to promote sustainability beyond their own local endeavors. These efforts include the Climate Protection Programme of ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability, the Climate Protection Agreement of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the Climate Initiative of the Clinton Foundation. Each one of these initiatives asks urban leaders to commit their cities to reduce their

1 The rankings and associated Sustainability Scores of American cities we use come from Kent Portney’s ongoing analyses of the largest 55 cities in the United States. The most current ratings can be found at the Our Green Cities web site, http://ourgreencities.com:80/.

3 carbon footprint and to attack greenhouse gas emissions. In turn, the institutions promoting these plans provide technical assistance to the cities committing themselves to sustainability programs (Portney and Berry, 2014).

POSTMATERIAL CITIES Expectations of an urban push toward sustainability are fueled by the evolving economic and social character of American cities. It wasn’t too long ago that scholars were worried about an urban death spiral (Bradbury, Downs, and Small, 1982; Bartlett, 1988; Banfield,1990; Sugrue, 1996). Decades of migration out to the suburbs by whites and migration into the cities by low income minorities, generated serious concern that cities would become increasingly unappealing repositories of the poorest and most marginalized among us. Yet cities have rebounded and they’ve gained population in recent years. Today there’s reverse migration with increasing numbers of white suburbanites moving back into central cities (Ehrenhalt, 2012).

While population growth has buoyed cities, they have not simply been passive recipients of a change in American lifestyles. Rather, city officials, business leaders, and real estate developers have created incentives for both individuals and firms to locate within city boundaries. Cities have actively marketed themselves based on the lifestyles and amenities they offer (Chaker, 2014). And that strategy appears to pay off. Glaeser, Kolko and Saiz (2001) find that high amenity cities are growing faster than those with lower amenities. Cities are particularly interested in attracting what Richard Florida (2004, 2012) calls the “creative class”—those individuals who will make a city both more interesting to live in and more prosperous. Politically, these lifestyle qualities fit comfortably with the concentration of liberals within cities and the evolution of liberalism away from material pursuits to postmaterial concerns (Berry, 1999).

Cities are now perceived as exciting and creative places for commerce. A recent Brookings study highlights a growing trend toward innovation districts in highly urban sectors of central cities. They often emerge as re-imagined areas that repurpose decrepit manufacturing or warehouse buildings. The authors conclude that workers and firms “crave proximity so that ideas and knowledge can be transferred more quickly and seamlessly. Our ‘open innovation’ economy rewards collaboration, transforming how buildings and entire districts are designed and spatially arranged” (Katz and Wagner, 2014, 1). The potential of incipient innovation districts is enhanced by mass transit, bike paths, open space, high-speed connectivity, and adjacent housing. Cities can offer proximity and infrastructure.

For all these reasons, urban leaders want their city to be viewed as a green city. They believe that the type of people they want to attract to build businesses, work in those businesses, and provide the ancillary services for that economy, are people who are drawn to a city committed to extolling and protecting the environment. For business the most desirable sustainability initiatives are those that promote access to business districts (like light rail), incentivize real estate development (through zoning, expedited permitting, and tax abatements), and nurture the development of communities that appeal to the young professionals they crave for their workforce. In varying degrees business leaders are willing to accept some of the policies other stakeholders push, such as dedicated taxes, linkage requirements, and land use restrictions, to obtain what they need before investing.

The other stakeholders include environmental advocacy groups, neighborhood associations, and broad-based civic associations (Stokes, Mandarano, and Dilworth, 2014; Fisher, Campbell, and Svendsen, 2012; Connolly, Svendsen, Fisher, and Campbell, 2013). Whether it be Zero Waste San Diego, the Maricopa County Audubon Society, the Louisville Climate Action Network, or Greening of Detroit, these local advocacy organizations abound. What we have found is that environmental advocacy and the inclusion of environmental groups in policymaking (controlling for other variables), is strongly linked to the number of sustainability programs and policies in a city (Berry and Portney, 2013; Portney and Berry, 2014).

These findings also indicate that there is more at work in terms of urban sustainability success than a dense network of advocacy groups. What is particularly important is that city hall is a dramatically different venue for interest group lobbying than those at other levels of government. City policymaking is distinctive because of its low barrier to entry for interest groups (Berry, 2010). Simply put, it is considerably more difficult to get someone in government to pay attention to your group in Washington than it is at the city council or at city administrative offices. The door is wide open to local advocacy groups. Surveys we conducted in our 50 cities show that 92 percent of local interest group leaders say that when they make a phone call to city hall, their call will “usually” or “almost always” go through or be returned. This is a remarkable level of openness.

The low barrier to entry derives from a number of factors. To begin with, the overall density of interest groups in a city is relatively modest in comparison to what’s found at the state and national level. City councilors and local agency administrators are not inundated with requests for meetings from lobbyists; thus they are able to respond to reasonable demands on their time from advocates. The low density of interest groups is directly related to the regulatory framework for cities. Unlike Washington, where the national government regulates broadly across all of American business, city governments lack the power to regulate most sectors of the economy. For most local industries there is little reason to pay the costs of organizing. In the area where cities have the most regulatory power, land use, local business does tend to be organized. Another feature of city’s governing framework is the politics of place. Much of what a city does is sited in specific neighborhoods (schools, parks, streets, real estate development, etc.). The incentive for neighborhoods to organize, though, is countered by the collective action problem. Fortunately, the scale of organizing required to overcome the free rider problem is modest. A neighborhood association does not need an office nor a paid staff—just a couple of dedicated activists. And, again, what we’ve found is that if one of those activists calls city hall, there is usually some level of responsiveness. City councilors are often elected by neighborhood and that adds to the responsiveness of city hall to neighborhood advocacy.

TIGER OR PAPER TIGER? The Tea Party is like no other political movement before it (Skocpol and Williamson, 2012; Parker and Barreto, 2013). It is a hybrid—part political party, part interest group, part social movement, and part anything local organizers want it to be (Goss and Heaney 2010). The Tea Party is a national movement without national-level organizations or coordination (despite efforts by Washington-based Freedom Works and others to scale the organization upwards). In

5 the section that follows we will provide a more detailed analysis of the Tea Party’s organizational structures. Here let us merely stipulate that volunteer leadership directs local entities without any constraints from state or national parent organizations.

The autonomous nature of the chapters leads to each one choosing its issue priorities and while they vary across the cities, some staples of modern conservatism (gun rights, budgets, the size of government) are of common concern. When we asked interviewees as to their chapters priorities, “sustainability” in its abstract form was not one of the most popular issues. However, when more concrete, immediate local matters (like transportation projects) are taken into account, many chapters identified some aspect of sustainability as an issue they were concerned about. What we heard in interviews is a belief that sustainability works against the American way of life. Chapter leaders were quick to link our general question about whether their chapter worked on sustainability with the United Nation’s Agenda 21 document.2 Agenda 21, the extensive proposal that operationalized the Brundtland Commission report (described earlier), grew out of the U.N.’s 1992 “Earth Summit,” and was created to provide guidance to policymakers as they increasingly sought to consider the environmental impacts (costs) of human behavior and traditional economic development. The application of Agenda 21 to cities is advocated in “Local Agenda 21,” an initiative spearheaded by ICLEI, an international organization designed to provide technical assistance to local governments worldwide that seek to understand how to reduce their environmental impacts. The Tea Party leaders’ responses to our questioning not only indicated hostility to combating sustainability, but indicated that the United States was under attack by an international conspiracy. One respondent told us that Agenda 21 “deals with population control and it’s not good for the sovereignty of the U.S. because it’s a mandate from the UN.” Asked about Agenda 21, another local leader said “Part of the international adoption code is putting a lock box in on people’s homes. . . You have the U.S. representative for ICLEI say that they’re secretly implanting this, along with the NSA intrusion into our personal lives.” One leader said that “They want to move us into cities and take away our [freedoms].” Still another interpretation came from this chapter head: “Gun rights, that’s part of Agenda 21. That’s a UN world order to disarm [everyone].”

Given the substantial variance in the understanding of Agenda 21, it’s unsurprising that there is no one foundation for the conspiracy theories we heard. The two major sources of information cited by interviewees were speakers who appeared at their regular chapter meetings and talk radio. There was no one organization providing the outside speakers so that source is varied as well. Due to the lack of a central, national Tea Party organization, talk radio has played a crucial communications role for the national Tea Party movement. Talk radio shows attract an estimated audience of 35 million listeners a day. And virtually all of the political talk radio shows are conservative as there is simply no real radio market for liberal voices (Berry and Sobieraj, 2014, 13). These conservative voices are uniformly antagonistic to the United Nations,

2 Since ours were elite interviews, the sequence of questions and wording of questions is not precisely the same in each interview. However, unless it came up in the context of another question, we always asked a general question about sustainability. We then asked a question about whether the chapter did anything on Agenda 21. We also asked about any work the chapter did on the environment and we asked about global climate change too. There were probes and follow-ups to some of the answers to these questions. All of this together gave us a good idea of what each chapter was doing in the broad area of sustainability and environmental protection. 6 sustainability, and Agenda 21. For example, Glenn Beck, who often emphasizes conspiracies, devoted a full episode of his radio show in August, 2012, to the “worldwide conspiracy” to limit peoples’ rights through radical environmentalism as reflected in the U.N.’s Agenda 21 proposal. Beck was not necessarily leading the charge, but was rather capitalizing on growing concern among many libertarians. Organizationally, this opposition was manifested in Beck’s own 9/12 Project, groups such as Sovereignty International and Freedom21, which formed in direct opposition to Agenda 21, and in local Tea Party chapters around the country. As more and more cities engaged in planning efforts to minimize environmental impacts, the Tea Party worked to crystallize the political pushback. Leaders focused attention on the ever-unpopular United Nations and on an over-reaching government as reflected in comprehensive land use and smart growth planning. As a 2011 Mother Jones article documented, “tea partiers have trained their sights on a new insidious target: local planning and zoning commissions, which activists believe are carrying out a global conspiracy to trample American liberties and force cities into Orwellian ‘human habitation zones’” (Mencimer, 2011).

When local governments have tried to promote public transit, higher density housing, energy efficiency, protection of watersheds, and dozens of other specific policies and programs, local Tea Party activists have stood in vocal opposition. The example from Watertown, MA, described earlier, is not alone. Efforts to disrupt local planning and city council meetings have been reported throughout the U.S. In late 2010 and early 2011, planning officials in Edmond, Oklahoma, held a series of open public “sustainability forum” meetings to present preliminary proposals on sustainable development. These meetings were met with increasing opposition to the city’s emerging sustainability plan. At each meeting, numerous residents spoke in strident opposition. Edmond, like hundreds of other U.S. cities, had joined ICLEI in order to receive technical assistance and detailed “best practices” advice. Most speakers argued that Edmond had fallen victim to the U.N.’s “socialist agenda” and was furthering the “U.N.’s invasion of the U.S.,” themes echoed by tea-partiers all around the country (Coburn, 2010; Carey, 2012). Two weeks after the March 7, 2011 sustainability forum, Edmond sent a letter to ICELI withdrawing from membership. The sustainability plan in the city was never to be seen again (Holt, 2011).

Local Tea Party organizations often explicitly target elections out of a desire to ensure that the “right people” get elected to public office, and anti-sustainability has become a rallying point. When Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper ran in 2010 for governor of Colorado, his Tea Party-supported Republican opponent, Dan Maes, made Hickenlooper’s support for sustainability a major campaign issue. Hickenlooper, a long-time supporter of sustainability and climate protection in Denver, was mayor when the city created its B-Cycle bicycle sharing program in an effort to reduce traffic and the city’s carbon footprint. In a campaign rally in a Denver suburb prior to the Republican primary, Maes accused Hickenlooper of "converting Denver into a United Nations community" by trying to take peoples’ cars away from them. The message may have played a role in gaining Maes the Republican nomination, but Hickenlooper prevailed in the general election (Osher, 2010).

The Tea Party’s prowess in elections certainly makes it a much-feared organization within and outside of the Republican Party. There is little doubt that the movement has pulled the Republican Party to the right as incumbent legislators fear being “primaried” by challengers to the right of them who claim the Tea Party mantle (Boatright, 2014). Only a handful of sitting

7 members of Congress have actually been defeated by Tea Party primary challengers but those defeats have sent shock waves throughout the GOP. The recent defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the near-death primary for Thad Cochran was a rude rebuke to those who thought that the Tea Party movement had crested. Richmond Tea Party leader Larry Nordvig said few election observers were aware of just “how much activity was going on underneath the surface” (Martin, 2014). This electoral fear may be what really drives Tea Party success. Tea Party groups may not need much of a lobbying presence because their reputation is what moves city officials who want to do whatever they can so as not to cross their antagonists.

Still, for all the evidence pointing toward a powerfully influential movement, there are many reasons to be cautious in assessing the Tea Party’s impact on in the everyday politics of city government. First, there is a tendency to conflate conservative public opinion with Tea Party advocacy. For example, when a metropolitan-wide proposal to expand and improve Atlanta’s mass transit system through a penny increase in the sales tax was on the ballot in the affected communities, it was soundly defeated. When we asked a top official in the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, a strong supporter of the measure, for his take on the vote, he blamed the Tea Party. The ballot question was approved in Atlanta but trounced in the largely white suburbs. Without the Tea Party, it seems very likely that suburbs, largely populated by conservative whites, would have still vote against a proposal to raise their taxes for a transit system that was generally identified with the needs of a largely African American city.

Second, it is possible that cities have learned how to adapt to conservative opposition to sustainability initiatives. In a systematic online search for articles about specific instances of local Tea Parties involving themselves in sustainability planning forums and venues, the vast majority of cases we turned up were in the initial years of Tea Party activity (roughly 2009- 2011). There were considerably fewer cases in the period from 2012 through the spring of 2014. We interviewed a planner for a private firm that has done work across the country as a consultant to cities on their sustainability proposals. After the Tea Party’s emergence, he complained that meetings were commonly disrupted by aggressive opponents of sustainability. The response, he said, was to minimize talk about the environment. “The strategy is to flip this around and talk about jobs, economic development. Talk their language—talk about the free market, free enterprise.” The American Planning Association has held sessions at their conferences on dealing with sustainability critics and its “Communications Boot Camp” page on its web site, features a guide on how to respond to rhetoric attacking Agenda 21.3

Third, it may not be so much that policymakers and city planners have changed the way they market sustainability as it is the case that the Tea Party has changed. Local Tea Party chapters are entirely voluntary organizations with no paid staff, no office, and little money. Sociology 101 teaches us that organizations completely dependent on volunteers are hard to sustain over time. It’s certainly plausible that local chapters have lost some of the vibrancy of the early, heady days of the movement. If organization capacity has declined, there may simply be less advocacy aimed at sustainability and other local policy domains.

3 A sample of the APA’s memos can be found at https://www.planning.org/policy/communicationsbootcamp/guide/pdf/agenda21mythsfacts.pdf. 8

Tea Party Activism This initial review of what we know about the Tea Party and local environmental policymaking offers some contradictory views. Although we don’t know exactly how prevalent it has been, local Tea Party activists have disrupted numerous environmental planning meetings with aggressive behavior and virulent, conspiratorial rhetoric. At the same time, there is reason to suspect that the influence of local Tea Parties has been exaggerated, has been countered by effective planning strategies, or that initial influence has declined as local chapters have lost some of their vibrancy. Our empirical testing of Tea Party involvement in local politics is based on assessments of individual chapter-level activity. The goal here is to move beyond general conceptions of a Tea Party movement to something concrete. Thus, the surveys (detailed below), focus on measuring the degree to which local Tea Party organizations interact with government.

ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY Although there has been considerable journalistic coverage of the Tea Party as well a significant amount of survey research analyzing the views of Tea Party identifiers, systematic research on direct advocacy by Tea Party organizations is in short supply. An important exception is Skocpol and Williamson’s field work on local Tea Party groups (2012). Their first- hand observations of various Tea Parties, completed shortly after the movement emerged, documents energized chapters led by dedicated and passionate leaders.

Determining how to measure Tea Party activism requires defining a unit of analysis. Public opinion surveys are poor vehicles for such measurements since only a tiny percentage of the American population goes to meetings, engages in protests, or emails their legislators at the behest of the Tea Party. A further problem is that “Tea Party” is far from a clear, coherent concept. Many people identify with the Tea Party or support its aims but are by no means members of any Tea Party organization.

Given that the goal here was to improve our understanding of Tea Party mobilization, the research focused on tangible actions taken by chapters to influence public policy or election outcomes. Although consideration of Tea Party sentiment in the population may be of great concern at city hall, ultimately any such worries about public opinion must derive from some sense that Tea Party organizations have the capacity to strike at those they oppose. Through either electoral campaigning or advocacy, Tea Parties should have some ability to make life uncomfortable for city officials if they are to have an impact. Political capital must be convertible to have value.

The Tea Party movement may seem ubiquitous but we found that its organizational presence varies considerably across cities. Since any individual can pronounce themselves as head of a Tea Party chapter, some “chapters” are basically start-ups that failed but still subsist as something of a shell with marginal levels of activity. There is no policing, no licensing of the Tea Party brand. Some chapters identify with a state or national parent, such as the Tea Party Express or Tea Party Patriots, but they are not franchisees. They are not like the local McDonald’s that, while locally owned, still has to sell McDonald’s products and abide by McDonald’s rules.

From earlier research (Berry, Sobieraj, and Schlossberg, 2012) as well as from the interviews conducted for this paper, we find some clear, consequential patterns of Tea Party organizational structure and behavior. We observe that most Tea Party chapters are small and fragile and have very limited organizational capacity. By “capacity” we refer to the ability of the organization to convert its resources into meaningful political action. Capacity is usually low because resources are scarce and the processes for converting resources are constrained by available personnel and structural shortcomings. In business terms, the supply chain has no routinized system to fashion raw material into a finished product and then bring that product to market.

Perhaps, though, this conception of organizational capacity is misconceived, based too much on classic conceptions of Washington interest groups. In evaluating the capacity of a Washington lobby, we would consider its lobbyists, its budget, and its public relations abilities, among other attributes. But, again, local Tea Parties are built around volunteers, and their passion might be the true organizational strength. Since they’re volunteer-based and do not need to pay lobbyist salaries (or rent for an office), they don’t need much in the way of money. In an earlier study a local Idaho leader told us proudly that “currently our budget is $350. [That’s what is] in our bank account” (Berry and Sobieraj, 2014, 165). These local groups’ communications network is talk radio, especially popular hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Mark Levin.

Broadly then, these local groups’ lobbying prowess may not come from traditional views of lobbying centered around group representatives meeting with policymakers. Rather, occasional outbursts and disruptions may create concerns on the part of policymakers who anticipate antagonism if they adopt certain policies. Theda Skocpol notes that the real power of the Tea Party lies in “leverage.” Even though the Tea Party is not popular nationally, “they’ve still got a lot of leverage because they participate. They are good citizens who pay attention. They are revved up. They turn out to vote” (Kopicki, 2014).

LINES OF INQUIRY Building on our recent set of Tea Party interviews we approach this question of tiger vs. paper tiger, reputation vs. reality, by following two related lines of inquiry. The first concerns access and interaction with policymakers, and the second focuses on lobbying impact. By access we mean the ability of organizations to speak with those in government. This emphasis is well grounded in the literature on interest groups and policymaking. Access is a prelude to influence, yet access is not an equal opportunity employer. Broad patterns of inequality of access are well established (Schlozman, Verba, and Brady, 2012). At the same time the patterns are not simply ones that manifest privilege. Citizen groups, for example, are overrepresented in actual lobbying activity (Baumgartner et al, 2009, 9). As we’ve already indicated here, city government is highly permeable with low barriers to entry for all advocacy organizations who seek to speak to policymakers. Access is tied inseparably to the tactics and strategies of interest groups. Surveys of interest groups commonly include questions relating to the frequency of particular lobbying approaches (Schlozman and Tierney, 1986). Some tactics are considered to be far more effective in influencing the government than others. A personal meeting with a policymaker is generally more valued than a one-shot protest. The level of interaction is also important as an ongoing

10 relationship with policymakers is considered to be optimum in lobbying world. Low barriers to entry should facilitate such ongoing dialogue.

In turn, this leads to our second line of inquiry: what is the impact of this advocacy? Even if a legislator, city administrator, or mayor or city manager agrees to sit down with an interest group representative, there is no assurance that interaction will lead to anything. A public official may feel there is value in appearing to be responsive to his or her constituents while not regarding the issue at hand as a priority. Alternatively, they may have some sympathy for what they hear but moving forward on the matter isn’t politically feasible and they don’t want to waste their political capital. Finally, they may be outright opposed to what is presented to them but feel it’s more politic to convey an open mind.

METHODS To address these questions we turn to a set of telephone interviews with leaders of local Tea Party organizations. As mentioned above, these interviews are complemented by both the city level interviews from 2009 and a database of city programs and policies related to sustainability. The earlier surveys were conducted in 50 of the largest American cities (ranking 5 through 54 in population) and included separate samples of city councilors, agency administrators and interest group advocates. Local Tea Parties did not show up in our advocacy group surveys in the 50 cities but the Tea Party was just emerging in 2009 and it’s not surprising that the surveys did not pick up many local chapters.

The initial challenge for the 2013-2014 Tea Party interviews was to identify a chapter in each of these locales. This turns out to be problematic as in some cities it was difficult to find any Tea Party presence while in others there was more than one Tea Party organization. Indeed, some organizations were rivals, each claiming to be the Tea Party of their city. In such cases an attempt was made to establish which group had the highest volume of recent activity. We particularly looked for chapter events, placing less value on Internet-only activity. Groups holding regular meetings were considered more active than those not conducting regular meetings. After a bit of detective work it was usually clear as to what was the most active organization.

The primary method of initially identifying these organizations was a simple Internet search which, in turn, generally led to a Facebook page or a web site. Another resource was a national Tea Party Patriots web site and the TeaParty911.com site. If our Web scan failed to produce an organization in a given city, the next step was searching within Facebook for a group in that particular location. If none of these methods turned up anything, the search procedures were repeated for the county or counties surrounding the city. If there was an active group in the county we included it as the representative of the city. All such county groups, to the degree they were active in lobbying, targeted the central city government as a focus of its advocacy. In the end we were able to identify a Tea Party organization in or around 47 of the 50 cities. However, in 7 cities of those 47 cities, we could not find any activism beyond traces of Facebook postings. Interviews were completed in 26 of the cities. In the strictest terms, with 47 cities as the base, our completion rate was 55 percent. We regard 40 as the more appropriate denominator as our search procedures were quite extensive and we’re confident that the Facebook only organizations were either remnants of a more vibrant organization that had decayed or were start-ups that never

11 matured successfully. By this standard our completion rate is 65 percent, a very strong performance given the challenges presented by this particular population.4

Most of the interviews were conducted during the summer of 2013. In 2014 we went back to those Tea Party chapters which didn’t respond to our earlier efforts and were able to complete a small number of additional interviews. These were elite interviews—all questions were open ended and interviewers were free to probe and follow-up answers. In cases of a non- response or a vacuous response, interviewers sometimes went back and asked what was essentially the same question with different wording. Elite interviewing offers depth and context to the investigator’s understanding of the phenomenon being researched but requires some skill in making decisions as to where to probe or branch (Leech, 2002). Care was taken to make sure that all basic questions were asked but the full value of the interviews comes from the broader array of questions that included probes and follow-ups. As a general portrait the interviewee subjects were old, retired, loquacious, and unfiltered.

The unfiltered nature of the interviews was aided by our clear statement in both initial email communication and at the start of the phone sessions themselves, that we would not use the subject’s name or the name of their specific Tea Party. This reflects the ground rules for “background” interviews where journalists are free to use material proffered but do no connect it with any individual. The interviews were not recorded but, instead, notes were taken contemporaneously and then filled in immediately after the completion of the session. Our transcripts are not perfect replications but they are close.

In the interests of space we will not detail the methodology used for the other two databases but simply refer readers to published work which contains fuller descriptions. The surveys of city councilors, administrators, and advocacy group leaders includes a set of questions about city policymaking in the area of sustainability (Portney and Berry, 2014; Berry and Portney 2013). An unusual attribute of the surveys is that many of the same questions are asked of all three populations, facilitating comparison across the sectors. The database on city-level performance on sustainability programs and policies is taken from Portney’s (2013) research on the same cities studied here. An index has been created for each city reflecting how many programs aimed at promoting or ameliorating sustainability it has in operation. There are 36 program categories, including industrial recycling, brownfield redevelopment, tax incentives for environmentally friendly development, car pool lanes, eco-industrial projects, and a sustainability indicators program. The index is additive so the more programs in operation, the higher the score. This is a rich database and external validation for the city rankings come from other studies utilizing different methodologies (Karlenzig, 2007; Siemens 2011).

4 Determining who should be interviewed for each organization and contacting that person was difficult as well. For some organizations the only way to contact them was to fill out a form on the “contact us” box on their web site. After filling out the form we didn’t always get a response. When we identified a leader of the group either through news reports, a listing of officers on a web site, the contact us box, or some other means, we provided that person with a description of the research, answered any questions they had, and then scheduled an interview if they were willing to be interviewed. Although there is not strict comparability in the way these groups are organized, all of those we interviewed clearly played a key leadership role. 12

Data Analysis The interviews with local Tea Party officials yielded some basic information about the organizations themselves, most of which attests to the limited capacity of these groups. We begin with these descriptive statistics before turning to a regression analysis designed to weigh the impact of Tea Party advocacy.

As reflected in Table 1, the first of these chapters were started in 2009, with nearly 70% of the 26 groups getting started in that year, when the Tea Party took the country by storm. The flip side of this is that at the time of the interviews (2013 or 2014), most of these organizations had existed for five or more years and has faced the challenges of maintaining an all-volunteer organization over a significant time period. Nearly half of these chapters report meetings once a month (Table 2). Very few held meetings more often than that, and over 40 percent don’t meet at all or meet rather infrequently. For those reporting open meetings, we asked what the range of attendance has been. Table 3 utilizes four categories of average attendance and reveals that among those that gave us an estimate of attendance, turnout was more than respectable. Two- thirds said they got more than 50 participants per meeting.

We use the information we obtained from interviews with local Tea Party officials to address the question we posed earlier concerning access and interaction with policymakers. The data suggest that there is no dominant path through which groups try to influence policymakers, either in terms of advocacy methods or in terms of which policymakers are targeted. The evidence also demonstrates that local Tea Party groups vary considerably in terms of the level of government they try to influence. Table 4 provides a summary of the types of officials with whom local Tea Party officials reported meeting; the results indicate that only a relatively small portion seem to have focused much attention on local government officials. Although Tea Party people were more likely to meet with local city councilors than any other policymakers, only a little over a third reported doing so. Even fewer, just over a quarter, reported meeting with the mayor or city manager. Tea Party officials were just about as likely to meet with state officials— state representatives—as local officials. Only a single respondent said that the chapter meets with a member of Congress. Decisions about which policymakers to meet with are undoubtedly tailored to the type of policy that is important to the local organization. But regardless of the type of issue that is important, local Tea Party representatives are simply not broadly engaged in trying to directly influence policymakers at any level. Over a quarter of the Tea Party people reported meeting with no policymakers, and among those 19 who had met with policymakers, 11 (58 percent) reported meeting with only one type of policymaker.

In terms of the preferred methods of engaging in advocacy activities associated with specific issues or policies, we were able to code whether each group relied on phoning, writing, emailing, and in-person meetings (Table 5). Note that the categories are not mutually exclusive so responses citing multiple tactics are reflected in the statistics. The lack of engagement in policy advocacy is reflected here as well. The most frequent method of advocacy is in-person meetings, and yet only a little over a third (38.5 percent) of the local Tea Party representatives reported having face-to-face meetings with policymakers. A little under 20 percent rely on writing, followed by phoning (15.4 percent), and email (11.5 percent). When we pressed

13 respondents as to why they weren’t more active in advocacy work, a number indicated that they weren’t really advocacy-oriented organizations. “We talk philosophically about [things]” said one leader. “We are an educational group—that’s just what we do,” said another. Another respondent told us that his chapter had trouble coming to agreement on issues facing the state: “We have problems that need to be addressed . . . but some issues just pull us into the weeds. If you say one thing, you’ll just irritate one half of the room and if you say something else you’ll irritate the other.”

Part of the reason for the modest Tea Party efforts at interacting with policymakers also derives from a focus by many chapters on electoral politics. Numerous leaders noted that their chapter’s efforts were focused on “getting the right people” into office, or getting certain existing elected officials out of office. The Tea Party representative from a Texas city made special mention of the organization’s desire to “get rid of the speaker” of the state house of representatives. One respondent said the group targeted replacing an existing U.S. Senator and another referenced the effort to “elect conservative judges.” The importance of the role of Tea Party groups in elections can be seen in response to specific questions about whether the group is involved in elections, and if so, at what level. Table 6 shows that 46 percent of the 26 Tea Party groups reported being involved in local elections, while only 27 percent reported involvement in state elections and 15 percent in congressional elections.

That said, we heard very little in the way of specifics as to what these groups did in the electoral arena. A few said they engaged in door-to-door campaigning. A few others spoke of candidate recruitment. “I recruited 11 candidates in the last 6 years” said one leader of a farm state chapter. More often than not, though, discussion of electoral activity was vague. Looking across all the transcripts and closely examining the context of what was said, our general impression is that these chapters do little in the way of real grassroots mobilization. What does appear to be the case is that there is substantial discussion of elections and candidates at chapter meetings and in internal communications. Also, some chapters hear candidates speak at their regular meetings held around election time.

These findings may seem at odds with the Tea Party’s reputation as a strong force in Republican primaries. What appears to be a counterintuitive argument on our part may have to do with what it really means to be the “Tea Party candidate.” The candidates who run as Tea Party insurgents typically decide themselves on this identity rather than being actually selected by Tea Party chapters. Even successful candidates like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul launched their own candidacies without significant Tea Party involvement. What the movement lacks are coordinating mechanisms or federated state organizations to facilitate formal or informal endorsements by a set of chapters. In the end, it’s usually the case that candidates recruit the Tea Party rather than the other way around. The real electoral power of the Tea Party seems to be the threat of the Tea Party. What is truly impressive is how many candidates in Republican primaries for open seats identify themselves with the Tea Party. As noted earlier, because they are worried about getting “primaried,” GOP legislators are extremely sensitive to votes that could be used against them in the next electoral cycle.

One complication to evaluating Tea Party advocacy and electioneering is that the scandal involving the IRS’s alleged targeting of conservative groups emerged shortly before the bulk of

14 our interviews were conducted. We heard a lot in our interviews about the IRS, much of it reflecting concern about what the IRS might do to the individual chapter. We did not ask respondents if their chapter had 501(c)(3) status but a few volunteered that they had it or wanted to apply for it. 501(c)(3) would block electioneering and while it doesn’t forbid lobbying, the opposite is commonly assumed. Since chapters generally avoid any broad fundraising efforts, there is little reason to file for 501(c)(3) status (which confers tax deductibility for donors). In the final analysis we do not know whether fear of the IRS played a role in developing their advocacy and election strategies.

Our second line of inquiry focuses on whether local Tea Party activity is at all related to policy outcomes. Do active Tea Party organizations exert influence on policymakers, undermining the willingness of city governments to adopt and implement local sustainability policies and programs? To address this question, we examine whether there is a correlation between the presence of local Tea Party groups and a measure of how robustly the city pursues sustainability policies and programs. In this regard we rely on the Sustainability Score which, again, computes cities’ policy and program commitment to sustainability from 36 separate variables (Portney, 2013). Table 7 presents the Sustainability Scores for each of the 50 largest U.S. cities divided into three groups: those that have local Tea Party groups in which we were able to conduct interviews; those that have local Tea Party organizations but where we were not able to conduct interviews; and the three cities (Baltimore, Columbus, and Oakland) with no discernible local Tea Party group. These results show that there is very little difference between the cities where we conducted interviews and those where we did not. And while the three cities with no Tea Party organizations had a higher average Sustainability Score, the small numbers preclude any inferences. Clearly, the 26 cities where interviews were conducted are not significantly different from the 21 cities where no interviews were conducted with respect to their propensity to enact sustainability programs.

The larger question is whether there is evidence to suggest that Tea Party groups, when actively engaged in local public affairs, can be said to have a discernible effect on the sustainability programs cities choose to pursue. Here we start with an effort to understand the link between these policies and local Tea Party activity. As shown in Table 8, the correlation between having a local Tea Party organization active in local elections and this Sustainability Score across the 26 U.S. cities where Tea Party interviews were conducted is -.396, strong enough to be statistically significant at the .05 level. On the surface there does seem to be a modest tendency for cities whose Tea Party groups are active in local elections to enact and implement fewer sustainability-related programs. On average, the 12 cities with local Tea Party groups active in local elections enact 22 sustainability-related programs; the 14 cities with local Tea Party groups that are not active in local elections enact over 27 such programs.

Of course, even a strong correlation does not provide adequate evidence that the Tea Party is responsible for the difference. This could be a purely spurious relationship where local Tea Party groups are formed and are more active in cities that, for other reasons, are disinclined to pursue sustainability policies. Here we examine the relationship between Tea Party activity and city sustainability policies controlling for two potential spurious influences using OLS regression. The first variable is a measure of whether there are local environmental groups that are frequently included in local policymaking as reported by city administrators. This variable

15 measures the percent of local city administrators who reported that local environmental groups would “very likely be included” in policy deliberations about economic development and the environment. The second variable, also from questions posed to city administrators, measures the percentage of administrators who said that “most city councilors/commissioners” are “liberal” or “very liberal.” Table 9 presents these basic multivariate results. These results indicate that the cities with Tea Party groups active in local elections do not have significantly fewer sustainability programs than other cities once these two potentially spurious influences are controlled. Clearly, cities where administrators reported the majority of city councilors are liberal are significantly more likely to pursue sustainability programs than cities that are less liberal. And cities with environmental groups that are included in policy deliberations are also more likely to pursue a greater number of sustainability-related programs. The Tea Party does not seem to bear much influence on this relationship. Apparently local Tea Party involvement in local elections is more likely to occur in cities that are less liberal to begin with. In this sense, local Tea Party organizations probably do more to reinforce existing resistance to the pursuit of sustainability than to create new opposition.

Conclusion Virtually all of our respondents indicated that they had heard of Agenda 21 and were upset about what they regard as ill-conceived initiatives taken to combat global climate change. Yet when we asked what they were doing about it, the responses we heard reflected passivity. After one chapter leader ridiculed sustainability programs in his southern city, he then acknowledged that the group hadn’t done much: “We’re just trying to educate the public.”

It’s possible, of course, that we simply picked the wrong issue to focus on and that if we had chosen another we would have found greater activity. Yet sustainability is a central issue in cities, attracts a lot of attention, has strong supporters and biting critics, has been the target of local Tea Parties in the past, remains as “red meat” pages on Tea Party web sites,5 and perhaps most importantly for our purposes here, it is a policy area where local groups can have a real impact. Still, if we had chosen another issue where the cities had considerable authority over, would we have come up with different conclusions about Tea Party advocacy? There is no way of knowing for sure but what we can say is that we didn’t hear about much advocacy in other policy areas either. In short, our conclusion is that we observed low capacity organizations undertaking limited advocacy.

This portrait of very modest, low resource, low activity organizations stands in rather stark contrast to the general view of the Tea Party as a strong, vibrant presence in Republican party politics and a force to be reckoned with for congressional policymakers. There are a number of reasons that help us to understand this disconnect. A starting point may be the life cycle of the Tea Party. We noted at the outset that based on newspaper and magazine coverage, the strident protests and disruptions of meetings by anti-sustainability Tea Party activists appears to have diminished over time. However, the issue itself has not lost saliency. We do not have data on what has happened to Tea Party chapters as the movement has aged but we have a strong suspicion that they have lost some significant magnitude of organizational vitality. Tea Party

5 See, for example, “What is Agenda 21?”, at TeaParty911’s site: http://www.teaparty911.com/issues/what_is_agenda_21.htm.

16 chapters have declined in numbers across the country as the overlap of chapters in the same metropolitan areas inevitably resulted in eventual mergers or organizational fatalities. It’s likely that time has taken its toll on even those chapters that have survived to the present day. With no paid staff, no reliable income stream, an older membership, and an overly broad array of issues that are of concern, the organizational challenges of an entirely volunteer organization are substantial. What we noticed from our interviews is that the leaders had a caustic, conspiratorial view of American politics while lacking a strategy for making things better beyond electing purer conservatives.

Cities are not the best arena for Tea Party politicking. Cities have high concentration of liberals and minorities who typically far outnumber the type of people who would be sympathetic to the Tea Party. Local business leaders are not on the same page as the Tea Party and this robs local Tea Party chapters of some who might otherwise seem to be natural allies. City governments are increasingly aggressive in trying to market themselves to young professionals; they regard “green” attributes to be a key to attracting this demographic. To varying degrees, environmentalists are organized into advocacy groups in cities and we find that higher levels of environmental advocacy are positively correlated with the number of sustainability programs. Within many large cities environmentalists are simply better organized and more active than local Tea Party chapters.

Our research on Tea Party chapters also suggests caution in using chapters as a measure of Tea Party strength or even of a Tea Party presence. Some researchers have used the number of Tea Party chapters in different regions as an indicator of conservative mobilization (McVeigh, Beyerlein, Vann, and Trivedi, 2014). Given the low barrier to entry and lack of any kind of licensing, a chapter listed somewhere online is not an indication of real activity. As we noted above, 7 of the 47 city chapters we found didn’t seem didn’t appear to have any presence beyond some faint postings on Facebook. Other chapters did very little beyond meeting, socializing, and kvetching. Among those that were active, there was scarce evidence of advocacy that was sustained or broad-based.

There is no question that the rise of the Tea Party has shaken Republican politics and pulled public policy at the national level and in many states in a more conservative direction. Yet there seems to be a gauzy romanticism associated with the Tea Party. Writing recently in the American Prospect political analyst Paul Waldman (2014) concludes that the Tea Party has been able to sustain itself because “it gives people opportunities to achieve results on the local and state level, so their individual effort becomes meaningful to them.” In some chapters this may be true but outside of the electoral arena, these opportunities seem to run up against weak structural mechanisms to promote collective action. More broadly, the Tea Party and conservative public opinion are too often equated as one in the same. The Republican Party is dominated by older, white conservatives and when the most conservative sector of the party vanquishes more mainstream candidates in a primary, it is typically attributed to the influence of the Tea Party. But there have always been older white conservatives in the Republican Party and their influence was felt long before the Tea Party arrived on the scene. The Tea Party has strengthened that voice but it did not give birth to it. As the Tea Party has aged, analysts need to be careful in assessing the influence of organizations truly mobilizing followers and to distinguish that influence from the underlying demographics of a political party that has been unable to diversify

17 itself. The core of the Republican Party are steadfast conservatives who are capable of expressing their preferences independent of Tea Party activity in their community or state.

Table 1 Year Local Tea Party Organization Started

Number of Tea Percent of Tea Year Started Party Groups Party Groups

2009 18 69.2% 2011 2 7.7% 2013 1 3.8% Not known 5 19.2%

Totals 26 100.0%* *Does not add to 100% because of rounding error.

Table 2 Frequency of Open Public Tea Party Meetings

Number of Tea Percent of Tea Party Frequency of Meetings Party Groups Groups

No meetings 5 19.2% Once a week 1 3.8% Twice a month 1 3.8% Once a month 12 46.2% Every other month 1 3.8% Quarterly 3 11.5% Once a year 1 3.8% “Periodically” 2 7.7%

Totals 26 100.0%* *Does not add to 100% because of rounding error.

Table 3 Turnout at Open Public Tea Party Meetings

Average Attendance Number of Tea Percent of Tea At Meetings Party Groups Party Groups

20-50 6 33.3% 51-100 7 38.9% 101-150 3 16.7% 151-250 2 11.1%

Totals 18 100.0%

Table 4 Interactions: With Whom Do Tea Party People Meet?

Number of Tea Percent of Tea Type of Meeting* Party Groups Party Groups

Meet with mayor/city manager 7 26.9% Meet with city councilors 10 38.5% Meet with state representatives 8 30.8% Meet with governor 1 3.8% Meet with member of Congress 1 3.8% Meet with no policymakers 7 26.9%

Totals 26 100.0%* *Categories are not mutually exclusive.

Table 5 Methods of Interacting with Policymakers

Number of Tea Percent of Tea Party Type of Interaction Party Groups Groups

In-person meetings 10 38.5% Writing 5 19.2% Phoning 4 15.4% E-mailing 3 11.5% None 4 15.4%

Totals 26 100.0%* *Categories are not mutually exclusive.

Table 6 Involvement of Tea Party Groups in Elections

Number of Tea Percent of Tea Party Type of Election Party Groups Groups

Local elections 12 46.2% State elections 7 26.9% Congressional elections 4 15.4% No elections 3 11.5%

Totals 26 100.0%* *Categories are not mutually exclusive.

Table 7 Comparison of Cities with Tea Party Organizations

Cities with Active Tea Party Cities with Active Tea Party Cities with No Active Tea Party Organizations Interviewed Organizations Not Interviewed Organization Sustainability Sustainability Sustainability City Score* City Score* City Score* Albuquerque 32 Austin 29 Baltimore 25 Arlington 20 Cleveland 31 Columbus 31 Atlanta 23 Denver 24 Oakland 32 Boston 28 Detroit 33 Charlotte 29 El Paso 23 Colorado Springs 15 Fresno 26 Dallas 27 Honolulu 22 Fort Worth 24 Indianapolis 27 Jacksonville 23 Kansas City 28 Las Vegas 26 Long Beach 22 Louisville 25 Mesa 22 Memphis 20 Miami 26 Minneapolis 31 Milwaukee 24 Nashville 29 Oklahoma City 18 Philadelphia 31 Omaha 19 Portland 35 Phoenix 31 Raleigh 26 San Francisco 35 Sacramento 31 San Jose 30 San Antonio 26 Tucson 29 San Diego 30 Tulsa 18 Santa Ana 16 Washington, D.C. 29 Seattle 35 St. Louis 19 Tampa 20 Virginia Beach 17 Wichita 7 Average Score 24.8 26.0 29.3

N 26 21 3 *As of July 1, 2012.

Table 8 Average Sustainability Scores* in Cities Where Tea Party Organizations are Active and Not Active in Local Elections (N = 26)

Cities with Tea Party Organizations Cities with Tea Party Organizations Active in Local Elections Not Active in Local Elections 22.0 27.2 n =12 n = 14 r = -.396 Significance of r = .045 *As of July 1, 2012.

Table 9 OLS Regression Results Showing the Effects of Tea Party Organizations’ Electoral Involvement on City Sustainability Policies and Programs (N = 26)

Dependent Variable is the City Sustainability Score

Independent Variable β Beta Significance

Tea Party Involved in -2.7 -.202 .210 Local Elections? % of Administrators Reporting Inclusion of Environmental Groups in .107 .315 .068 Policymaking “Very Likely” % of Administrators Reporting Most city councilors/commissioners .093 .450 .014 “Liberal” or “Very Liberal” Constant 17.3 ------.000 R2 .525 Significance .001 Works Cited

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