Mary Rakovich's small protest against stimulus erupted into 'tea party' movement
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Discussion PolicySaturday, May 29, 2010
The "tea party" movement quickly came to a boil and before you knew it the incredible started happening.
A Republican took Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. The GOP governor of Florida was forced to run as an independent for the Senate. An establishment conservative Republican senator in Utah was run out of the reelection campaign. A libertarian with curious ideas won the Kentucky GOP Senate primary against the party leadership's favored candidate.
Now with tea partiers flexing more muscle in Republican Senate primaries coming June 8 in Nevada and California, and a Republican House primary the same day in the Hampton Roads area, it seems worth asking: How did it all begin? Who dropped in the first bag of something strong, steeped the potent brew -- and inquired of the powers that be: "One lump or two?"
That would be Mary Rakovich, 53, an unemployed automotive engineer, an anti-abortion vegetarian with nine cats and a dog and a fierce concern about where this country is heading. She has two bad hips and so attends demonstrations with a walker. A yellow sticker on the back of her Chevy TrailBlazer warns: "CAUTION: Right-Wing Extremist onboard."
On Feb. 10, 2009, Rakovich and her husband, Ron, took a cooler of water and a few signs they had made the night before -- "Real Jobs Not Pork," "Stop Stealing Our Children's Future," etc. -- and went down to a convention center in Fort Myers, Fla., near where they lived. President Obama was holding one of the first town hall meetings since his inauguration. Rakovich objected to the $787 billion stimulus plan, which looked to her like an expensive, misguided big-government overreach.
Rakovich had never been to a protest before, much less organized one, and she didn't know much about how to do it. She and her husband had been laid off from automotive contract jobs in Detroit and moved to Fort Myers to take care of Ron's parents in 2006. The couple had married in 2002 and they have eight children from previous marriages living outside the house.
Before her first protest, Rakovich sent out some e-mails, tweets and Facebook messages, and she called a conservative radio program. She wondered if anyone would show up.
One person did. Julie Flynt, now 50, a software instructor who supports abortion rights, drove from the other side of the state to join the demonstration. A few other sympathizers floated by, but they seemed reluctant to hold signs.
The three demonstrators waved their placards and tried to engage Obama supporters in conversation as the supporters waited to go inside for the town hall. The conversations were civil, Rakovich says.
"When it was basically over, I got a phone call from national Fox News," Rakovich recalls. "They wanted to know if I would go on Neil Cavuto. And I'm like, huh? Prior to this event, I had never spoken to the press regarding anything, ever."
Over the next seven days, incrementally larger protests broke out in Seattle (estimated more than 100 people), Denver (nearly 300) and Mesa, Ariz. (500).
Then on Feb. 19, another signal moment: The movement got its name.
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