Documenting the Davis County Tea Party

August 12, 2010

All images were taken on a Mamiya 645 Pro with a 80mm f/2.8 lens. Film used was Kodak Portra 400 while outdoors and Portra 800 for indoors.

I saw this guy wearing tea bags on his colonial era hat on the news one night. I knew about the Tea Party movement yet it was still funny to see the little bags swing around as he talked to the interviewer. I thought it would make a great portrait with all those dangling accessories. It was the late spring of 2010 and the country was still reeling from the Great Recession. I had a newly minted Political Science bachelors degree but it didn’t seem to help with any of the hundreds of jobs I had applied to.

I was bored waiting for some sort of job to materialize from my endless applications. I decided to continue my hobby of political photography essays I had originally started in college. These essays involved a series of images that convey a visual message rather focused on a political theme. In many cases the visual cues can give better, or at least different, insight into a political topics. Often with a greater view of humanity from a normally abstract topic only represented in words. This hobby was a natural combination of my fascination with politics and my love for documentary photography.

A ‘Grassroots’ Movement

The Tea Party movement manifested after the financial meltdown of 2008 as a reaction to high taxes, government bailouts for big corporations, and perceived fiscal irresponsibility.¹ It was named after the historic Boston Tea Party and so the associated iconography of tea bags and colonial era clothing was the standards of members to show their political affiliation. As far as specific policy, the group advocated for reduced government spending, lower taxes, and a strict originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. You could think of it as a more fiscally conservative oriented section of the Republican Party rather than social issue zealots.² As the movement gained momentum, it influenced the national political landscape, particularly steering the policy of the Republican Party,³ pushing for a return to conservative principles and limited government.

The Tea Party movement was national in scope but prided itself in being grassroots derived. This claim is dubious yet it helped me locate a local chapter where I didn’t have to travel very far to attend events and gatherings. I won’t deny the simple fact that the Tea Party was active locally. This whole photography essay is based on individuals being active in my local community. My disagreement comes from funding, which was sourced primarily from the Koch brothers⁴ at a national level through the group Americans for Prosperity.⁵ I would, however, give weight to the statement that it was a grassroots movement within the fact that individuals were active in their respective geographic areas.

I found the Davis County Tea Party chapter after a quick search on Facebook. In a message to the group administrator I explained my background, goals, and interest in documenting their gatherings if they would have me. They were more than happy to have me attend their meetings. I could only imagine the strong fervor they were operating in. In the late summer of 2010 the Tea Party movement was especially potent and lively. They would later sweep the primaries with victories that rocked the Republican Party.⁶ Not only did this usurp traditional Republican members, it in fact helped maintain and lengthen the majority the conservativie bloc held in the House of Representatives.⁷ They could only become a stronger and more validated movement by inviting a young student photographer to their meetings.

My introduction to the Davis County Tea Party was at the Mountain Road Evangelical Presbyterian Church. They got together on a semi regular basis in a group of 20 to 50 people. Each meeting had a central topic covered by a group member or an invited guest speaker. Another large portion of time spent was going over local candidates running for office and if their platform meshed with Tea Party ideals. After a litmus test of sorts they would invite members to participate in that candidates campaign through a variety of methods. In most cases that was canvassing neighborhoods, puttinig up signs, or canvassing over the phone. Additional group events were listed at the end of each meeting and were important for knowing when Tea Party oriented groups were orchestrating political rallies or other events nearby. For instance, when the National Doctors Tea Party group made a stop in Salt Lake City, the Davis County Tea Party group was vocal about getting times and date information distributed through their group.

After my first meeting I was graciously invited to many of these extracurricular events and gatherings. The first event only a week later was attending the National Doctors Tea Party held political rally at the Utah State Capitol. The group was on a country wide road trip to garner support in opposition to Obamacare. While I had hoped for dangling tea bags from colonial hats I instead got white lab coats.

A second summer gathering at the Utah State Capitol was the Take Back Utah rally, which argued against the vast amount of federally owned land in Utah. The central tenant of the argument was along Tea Party doctrine but attracted a wide variety of other political groups, some of which were outside the Overton window.

Most of the shadowing I did with this group was the politically mundane activities of theory reinforcement. There is only so many times you can hear the same political ideology at each meeting or rally being argued that you begin to tune it out. I say this with the utmost respect and as a holder of bachelor’s degree in political science. However, there was one specific instance of tense energy.

Towards the end of summer, when the primaries were beginning to materialize, Senator Orrin Hatch started scheduling these town hall meetings in each of the counties. Even though Senator Hatch wasn’t up for re-election until 2012 he saw the writing on the wall of this exponentially growing political movement. And he was certainly a member of the Republican establishment that was getting rocked. Getting in front of this energy would be crucial to him if he wanted any chance in 2012. The materialized energy in that town hall was everything I had heard about the Tea Party movement. Anger at the spending the federal government was doing, righteous indignation about big banks being bailed out when normal people had lost their homes, and the perceived socialization of the federal government through Obamacare.

Question after question was posed to Senator Hatch from the seemingly endless line of people that stretched the length of the hall and started wrapping around the back. There was always an empty political platitude from each of the questions from the public, meant to draw a round of cheering support as they stepped away from the microphone. Some of the questions were directed at Senator Hatch for being a problem as part of the Republican establishment that had failed them. Some were just a venting from the public. Towards the end of the meeting Senator Hatch proclaimed he was happy people were “mad as hell” about the current political state.

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