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Tea Party groups plan third annual convention
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Tea-party groups will gather in Columbus later this month for their third annual We the People Convention, this year with a focus on Medicaid expansion, balanced budgets and other hot topics of the moment.
The cost to attend the Sept. 28 event is $37.50, with tickets and details available online at www.wethepeopleconvention.org.
An agenda includes sessions titled “Religion in the Public Square,” “The Fight Against Common Core in Ohio,” “The Case for Photo ID in Ohio” and “Immigration Reform and What It Means to Taxpayers.”
Organizer Tom Zawistowski, who also heads the Portage County Tea Party, launched the event in 2011 as a venue for local tea party and like-minded groups to gather in one place for a day of workshops and panel discussions aimed at getting people more involved in government.
Past events have taken place around the Fourth of July holiday, but Zawistowski said he was holding off on this year’s sessions to see what Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature would do with Medicaid expansion and other issues.
A federal balanced- budget amendment will be a big focus of the day. Zawistowki said “I Am American,” a Florida-based conservative group, will head a discussion on the idea and the implications of a constitutional convention.
Kasich is pushing the balanced-budget amendment, and Republican lawmakers have offered resolutions calling on Congress to act.
“Nobody knows what the heck it is,” Zawistowski said of the Article V convention, a means of amending the Constitution. “We’re going to take two hours to talk about this and have people ask questions and get to the details.”
The event comes at a time when Zawistowski and tea-party leaders are voicing concern about policy decisions being promoted by Kasich and some Statehouse Republicans.
Zawistowski, who was unsuccessful in his bid to head the Ohio Republican Party earlier this year, has said he will campaign against Kasich and GOP incumbents in 2014 if they press Medicaid expansion and other issues.
“The work we did to get him elected is what got him elected [in 2010],” he said of the governor. “They can tell you that they’re going to get re-elected without [us], and I say, ‘Prove it.’”
He added, “We’re not about your political future. We’re about policy. We’re about what’s going on with our country.”