BigGovernment today has a piece up about the “Unhappy Anniversary of the Chicago Tea Party”, calling the Chicago Tea Party movement “a corpse”.

Here’s our take on all this, as people who were there for the first Tea Party, who marched in the demonstration, and who spoke at Tea Party events.

The problem with the Tea Party “movement” in Chicago is that it was, from the beginning, not an organic movement at all.  It was 100% orchestrated by political candidates and the Heartland Institute, which is a conservative political think tank here in Chicago.

The first Tea Party demonstration was co-opted by Dan Proft, a political consultant in Cicero, IL who makes a lot of money off that city by billing repeatedly for the same PR services, using a redundancy scheme where he gets paid once for publicizing City Hall or the town park, then gets a second check for “doing PR work” for the street those buildings are on.  So, it’s like renting someone a “horse”, but then charging them a second fee for “the legs”, “the head”, “the tail”, etc.

Dan Proft, back in February 2009, thought he was a legitimate candidate for Governor.  He, pretty much, was the only one who thought that.  He used the Tea Party as an excuse to collect emails and try to build a groundswell of support for his campaign.  Proft is a lot of things, bad mainly, but he’s sure a fantastic operator when opportunity emerges.  He saw the potential in the Tea Party spirit overtaking millions coast to coast who are fed up with the reckless spending of the government.  He saw people on television tapping into that Tea Party anger. So, Proft wanted to channel that energy into political benefit for himself.

One of Proft’s employees, Julie Johnson, became communications director for the nascent “Tea Party Organization” started up by a guy named Eric Odem.  Johnson and Odem pushed the Tea Party events in Chicago, on February 27th and on April 15th, 2009.

All the tea hit the fan in the leadup to the April 15th Tea Party when Johnson decided to blacklist a Tea Party event the Chicago Young Republicans were having at Navy Pier later in the day.  Here’s what the issue was:  Dan Proft staged the April 15th Tea Party in the Loop in Chicago because he wanted to use it to launch his gubernatorial bid.  The Heartland Institute funded the stage and sound equipment for that event, and thousands of people were expected to turn up.  It would have been a great venue for Proft to benefit from.  But, Johnson made the decision to go to war with the Chicago Young Republicans over their evening event…because, as communications director, she did not want the evening news to carry the CYRs’ event at Navy Pier (which had an actual tall ship and the dumping of wooden crates (on ropes to be pulled back on board) in Lake Michigan) instead of footage of Proft speaking at the afternoon Tea Party.

The end result was that Johnson and Proft blinked, and Proft did not speak at the Tea Party in the Loop on April 15th.  But, a lot of bad blood remains from what happened. Heartland, which is not supposed to back any candidate, got burned by the Proft connection, and has distanced itself from anything Tea Party since.

Johnson (who is actually a great person, by the way, and is someone we think will be a big player in local politics in the future), left the Tea Party structure shortly after Proft’s involvement in the April 15th Tea Party was exposed.  She worked for Proft’s failed gubernatorial bid and apparently continues to work for his political consulting firm now.

We have no idea what happened to Odem, but believe he’s still involved with Tea Parties somewhere…because he sees this as his chance to become very, very rich by tapping into this spirit and turning it into a business opportunity for himself.

When we say people should be wary of the Tea Party “movement”, this is the sort of thing we are talking about.

The spirit is real.

People are angry.

Americans don’t trust the government or the way it’s spending tax dollars.

But, Tea Party supporters should not trust the men and women who purport themselves to be “Tea Party Leaders”.

The danger, in our opinion, is that opportunists like Proft and Odem will usurp the legitimate spirit of the Tea Parties and create their own money-making ventures off them, or in the case of would-be politicians like Proft, co-opt the “movement” for their own campaign purposes.

The reason Chicago’s Tea Parties collapsed is because, sadly, they weren’t ever real to begin with.  That is clearly not the case nationwide, but it’s true for Chicago.  Proft’s involvement sank any chance of a real, actual, grassroots Tea Party group from forming in Chicago.  In truth, the CYRs didn’t stage their Tea Party event for the sake of Tea Parties either.  They used it as a membership recruiting drive for their organization (which we supported at the time) and a chance for their grandstanding president to be on TV a whole bunch, looking all manly on a boat. Way to go, stud!

The BigGovernment story didn’t reflect on any of this, but maybe it’s not widely known.

The way things work in Chicago is the way they are working in Washington, now that Chicago’s taken over DC.  It’s all about the ego, people.  If there’s energy and excitement and opportunity out there, a Chicagoan will try to capture all of that for personal use and enrichment.  Don’t come between a Chicagoan and a TV camera when Chicagoans want to promote themselves.

And, if that promotion fails, and if whatever endeavor they’re involved in tanks, they walk away from whatever they were doing.  As if it never happened.

Proft and others tried to use the Tea Party to further their own aims, but failed.

And, now that they’ve moved on to new schemes and dreams, they’ve left the Tea Party behind them.

It’s a cautionary tale we try to communicate to everyone who supports the Tea Party spirit, so that what happened in Chicago doesn’t happen elsewhere too.