Tea party recalls could backfire

Maggie Haberman and Alex Isenstadt

June 20, 2010 06:26 PM EDT

Tea party forces are seizing on a new strategy in their attempt to purge Senate incumbents from office: the recall.

While it’s not entirely clear whether their approach will meet constitutional muster, that hasn’t stopped determined groups of grass-roots activists from trying in nearly a half-dozen states.

The most prominent attempt to recall a sitting senator is currently unfolding in New Jersey, where Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez awaits a state high court ruling on whether a recall effort against him can go forward.

The New Jersey lawsuit — which questions whether tea party forces can legally gather signatures to petition for a ballot recall of a federal official — is emerging as the beachhead for a movement that some activists envision sweeping the country, the next step in the evolution of tea parties as a political force.

New Jersey Democrats have denounced the effort but are nevertheless nervous enough over it — and the press coverage it’s received — to launch a Web page designed to slam it. Party leaders have gone so far as saying it’s racially motivated against a Hispanic official, a claim tea party activists vehemently deny.

Other states where nascent recall efforts have been launched against Democrats include Louisiana, where Sen. Mary Landrieu has been targeted, and North Dakota, where Sen. Kent Conrad is the target. Tea party leaders said their allies in Colorado and Michigan are also closely monitoring the RecallNJ effort for clues on how to proceed.

If the suit succeeds — a decision is expected in the coming weeks — it will almost certainly raise the alarm among incumbent senators, even those who aren’t on the ballot this year.

Still, there are several considerable obstacles to recall efforts: There’s currently no explicit provision providing for the recall of a federal official, and case law in some states has gone against such efforts before.

And if it loses the legal fight, some critics argue, the tea party movement could find itself dismissed as a transitory political force, a high-impact media phenomenon that doesn’t have many legs beyond the peculiar 2010 cycle.

“There’s two trains of thought,” said RoseAnn Salanitri, a 60-year-old, stay-at-home mom who said she came to the idea of pushing for the Menendez recall after doing months of research on the law. “It can be [a loss] if we were inclined to roll over and play dead if they don’t agree with our position.”

But “we’re prepared to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court if need be. Sure, [that would] stall the petition drive in New Jersey, but should it go to the U.S. Supreme Court, it literally opens the door to the entire country to do this. This is not Vegas — what happens in Jersey won’t stay in Jersey.”

Not everyone agrees.

“A recall effort of a U.S. senator is a massive waste of time; it’s a legal impossibility,” said Dan Gerstein, a strategist who’s worked for Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman — another frequent target of recall activism, albeit from the left.

“Courts have ruled, it’s a settled matter, and the only thing the tea partiers will do by pursuing it is show how naive and ineffectual they are,” Gerstein added.

A longtime Democratic strategist who’s worked with senators across the country agreed, saying, “Every couple of years, there’s a recall movement that someone tries to push. It never really goes anywhere.”

Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, who watched the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in California up close, said, “The tea party is going to get to the jumping-the-shark phase here.”

If Salanitri and her allies clear the legal hurdle, they have another challenge: As Lehane noted, can they get the 1.3 million valid signatures to get on the state ballot and then succeed where others have failed at becoming a true national movement?

The Davis recall in California, which led to the election of GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, was viewed as an earth-shattering expression of voter discontent, but despite the best efforts of its backers, it never stretched beyond the boundaries of the Golden State.

The Davis recall, however, took place under different circumstances — he was a state official, not a federal one, and the law was clear. In the RecallNJ case, Salanitri argues, New Jersey’s broad recall laws ought to apply at the federal level.

One source close to Menendez said the Davis comparison isn’t apt, since California had been facing rolling blackouts, among other problems — all tangible crises that stoked voter outrage.

“There is nothing as outrageous as what California was going through,” said this source of New Jersey’s current political environment.

Another Menendez source said, “We were all a little surprised by it. It kind of came out of nowhere. There was really no basis for it.”

The source said Menendez is using the recall as an opportunity to begin laying the groundwork for his 2012 reelection and views it as an opportunity to start setting contrasts.

“There’s the opportunity to define yourself,” the source said.

Ruben LeBlanc, who’s spearheading the MoveOnMary.org effort that has Landrieu in its sights, said he and Salanitri are part of a coalition, including activists in North Dakota and Colorado, that make up a movement known as Right2Recall.

“I think this is very different” from past recall efforts, said LeBlanc, claiming he’s heard from activists in 39 other states looking at the possibility of testing their state laws to see if they can be used against federal officials. He said interested groups hold conference calls every week.

LeBlanc also said the Louisiana attorney general’s office has told his group it is watching to see the outcome in New Jersey before deciding whether its anti-Landrieu effort can go ahead.

LeBlanc, a registered Republican, bristled at his effort’s being characterized as tea party driven, arguing that he’s had Democrats ask to join his effort.

And while he acknowledged a loss in New Jersey would be a blow, he said the effort “wouldn’t be over, not by a long shot.”

Menendez spokesman Afshin Mohamadi said, “On one hand, you have a tea party organization that wants to protect the foreign corporation responsible for wrecking the Gulf Coast, wants to limit the Civil Rights Act’s ban on discrimination and has called President [Barack] Obama a communist linked to ‘radical blacks.’

“On the other hand, you have a strong leader in the efforts to hold Big Oil, Big Banks and Big Insurance accountable. That’s an easy choice for mainstream New Jersey families.”

While they’re projecting bravado, the fact that the case has reached the state’s high court has moved New Jersey Democrats to become more aggressive in their pushback, as they try to characterize the efforts as put together by right-wingers going after Menendez on racial grounds because of his Hispanic last name.

Salanitri insisted there was no racial motivation.

“It is so beyond ridiculous,” she said. “We could only pick one. ... Simply, [Menendez] is a younger man, and he’s in better health, and we thought he had a longer career ahead of him.”

Less clear is exactly how the New Jersey court battle — a hugely expensive effort — is being funded. Salanitri said the group now has a 527 committee in place for a legal fund and that lawyer Andrew Schlafly — son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly — is handling the case for free so far.

She acknowledged that not every tea party group was on board with the lawsuit, saying some had argued there should be a focus on defeating incumbents up for reelection this year.

“You can’t really paint every tea party with the same brush,” she said.

Salanitri and LeBlanc both emphasized that their Everyman roots were driving them.

“We’re ‘average’ all the way,” Salanitri said cheerily, while LeBlanc, who was in construction but is now unemployed, said, “I’m just a concerned citizen who’s had enough.”

Her husband is a car salesman. Her kids are grown, and she spent years as a Bible teacher who fought against Darwinian theories, writing a book called “GUTs All Tied Up With Strings,” about creationist theories.

Salanitri, a registered Republican who considers herself an “independent,” said she never voted before she was 40 years old and got active only as she got upset about the state of the country.

She and LeBlanc both voiced a wish to “take back our country,” without a clear message of what they would like to do with that control — something Lehane said is going to be to the tea party’s detriment.

“Ultimately, you have to provide people a governing philosophy that has some common sense in it — that is optimistic— and provides some ideas that represent hope — if you truly want to vector the anger into a real sustainable movement,” he said.

“Otherwise, it burns hot but burns fast — and the New Jersey tea party recall effort will signify to many that the tea party folks ... don’t have any real ideas that go at the underlying challenges facing the country.”