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  • David Adams, campaign manager for Dr. Rand Paul's U.S. Senate campaign, speaks during a Tea Party meeting at the Mountain View Lodge in Corbin on Saturday. Photo by Samantha Swindler

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May 17, 2010

Tea Party makes post-election plans

The Times-Tribune

CORBIN — By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

Laurel County Republican Party Chairman Bryan Mills called the relationship between the local GOP and the Tea Party movement “the perfect storm of cooperation.”

Mills told the 17 people gathered at a Whitley County Tea Party meeting in Corbin Saturday not to be discouraged by their small numbers. He said the first Laurel County Tea Party meetings drew only a handful of people — yet the county’s last rally in March brought out more than 100 participants.

Saturday’s meeting was organized by Dr. Frank Hudson, an administrator at Cornerstone Christian School. Hudson said he was “ranting and raving around the house” about the current political climate for about a year until his wife said, “why don’t you go out and do something about it?”

Hudson recently founded the Whitley County chapter of the Tea Party Patriots, which seeks to promote fiscal responsibility in government. Saturday’s meeting at the Mountain View Lodge was the group’s second event.

“We can’t keep going the direction we’re going right now,” Hudson said. “It’s unsustainable.”

Hudson hoped Tea Party members would “gain the knowledge of what’s going on to take back America one vote at a time.”

David Adams, campaign manager for U.S. Senate hopeful Rand Paul, also spoke during Saturday’s event, describing Paul as a “break the mold” candidate.

Mills, who’s supporting Paul in the primary, said too many candidates “play lip service to the ideas of the Republican Party and they go to Washington D.C. and do something completely different.”

He called Paul’s campaign a “unifying factor” for many of the Tea Parties, but asked those in attendance to be thinking of projects for after Tuesday and, potentially, after November. Hudson collected contact information from Saturday’s participants, and the Tea Partiers also discussed getting involved in local politics by appearing at city council and fiscal court meetings.

Information on future Tea Party events can be found at www.teapartypatriots.org/Group/Whitley_County_Kentucky_Tea_Party.

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