Minnpost's Max Sparber leads today's Daily Glean, Party pooper: Tax day protest turnouts underwhelming, with this:
Thursday we at the Daily Glean made the case that the Tea Party gets attention beyond that which they have earned. We thought we made the case pretty well, but did the local media listen to us? Oh no; no they didn't. Do they ever? Let's offer a little round-up of local coverage of tax day protests and see what we can learn:
At the start of the day, the Associated Press offered an opinion from statewide Tea Party coordinator Toni Backdahl that "protests could be larger this year because of anger by some over the health care overhaul." As it turned out, Backdahl was exactly wrong.
Sparber supports that assessment by looking at coverage of the Tea Party rally In St. Paul, where numbers dropped dramatically from the year before and national rallies, but doesn't go afield in Greater Minnesota. Inspired by Sparber's party pooping, I took a look around the state.
Judging from 2009 and 2010 old and new media accounts of Tea Party rallies in both years, both the number of events and people attending appear to have dropped. Most news accounts from 2009 place the number of Tea Parties in Minnesota at 16, with events scheduled, as the Star Tribune reported, in
Austin, Bemidji, Brainerd, Cook County, Duluth, Elbow Lake, Fairmont, Mankato, Mille Lacs County, North Branch, Rochester, Slayton, St. Cloud, St. Paul, Steele County [Owatonna] and Willmar.
The Winona Daily News noted a small gathering in Winona that drew 30-40 people; organized by the WSU College Republicans and Rev. Paul Ibisch, it was posted on the Campaign for Liberty site.
That's 17 tea parties in 2009. This year, the Tea Party Patriots listed 11 events (one is later in April) and most news accounts reported "at least 10" as did this AP article. The TPP site included:
Bemidji, Duluth, Mankato, Milaca, Owatonna, Princeton, Rochester, St. Paul, Willmar and Winona.
The West Central Tribune reported on a small Tea Party in Montevideo involving three or four dozen people, while the Brainerd Dispatch covered a rally there that "between 300 and 400" people attended.
That's 12 Tea Parties, down from 17 the year before. Austin, Cook County, Elbow Lake, Fairmont, North Branch, Slayton and St. Cloud didn't host Tea Parties again; Montevideo picked one up. The Princeton and Milaca events are most likely connected with last year's Mille Lacs County events.
For 2009-only rallies for which attendance figures can be found, that drop off is significant. The St. Cloud Times ( full article viewed via Nexis) reported that between 400-500 people attended; according the Austin Herald, 130 people attended the Spam Town gathering. No word on the attendance at the other 2009 singletons.
One city showed a dramatic increase: Winona, which skyrocketed from 30 to more than 200, the Winona Daily News reported.
Brainerd probably remained on an even keel, judging from pictures of the "hundreds" in 2009 who were prone to rash statements about religion and culture and the photos of the "several hundred" this year, who bemoaned media descriptions of Tea Party members as " "toothless white rednecks morons, fundamentalist Bible-thumping wackos, racist homophobic science-denying radical militiamen" before airing a list of grievances.
Estimates of Bemidiji's 2010 Tea Party attendance ranged from 300-400 people at a street rally, with only a third sticking around for speeches that came later. In 2009, 350 attended the rally, which included speeches.
If one accepts the figures from Tea Party organizers, the Duluth area attendance has declined. In 2009, the Duluth Tribune reported 700 Tea Partiers in Duluth and 200 in Superior, though the local planners put the numbers at slightly over 1200. This year? Between 800 and 1000, according to estimates by the papers and organizers.
Mankato's numbers probably would have dipped a bit had it not been for the arrival of 50 or more counter-protesters counted by a reporter from the local Fox affiliate.
While a preliminary guess by the station predicted larger numbers, a photo (right) from the Mankato Free Press show about 200 people in the 2010 crowd, the "hundreds" mentioned in the 2010 article.
Other photos that friends have sent concur with the 2010 Free Press picture that were taked at different times during the rally; this video from yesterday shows about the same number.
In 2009, the paper reported that 200 people were on hand for the protest by the Post Office in Mankato. This isn't "growing" numbers.
There's more evidence that Rochester's Tax Day Tea Party attendance has dipped. While I could not find any figures from news accounts published in 2009, KAAL-TV reported last night that over 1000 people attended last year. Today, the Tea Party friendly Post Bulletin reported:
Organizers estimated that about 1,000 people turned out for the rally. Rochester police put the total at about 500.
Split the difference, and it's still a decline from last year. It's significant that neither the Rochester nor the Mankato events showed a boost, because the deep drop in numbers at this year's event in Owatonna were attributed to a desire to get more people out in Mankato and Rochester, according to the Owatonna People's Press:
In the next half-hour, other Tea Party protesters trickled into Central Park, but by 6 p.m. the number in attendance was far less than last year — when more than 200 people descended on the park on Tax Day. Most of those present were familiar faces on the local Republican scene — former Rep. Connie Ruth, Janet Day and Brandon Pofahl. All in all, organizer Dave Thul said, there were about 48 people at the height of the protest — 14 of them holding signs on the sidewalk. Thul said he was not worried about the sparse number of Tea partiers.
“Last year’s event was kind of thrown together at the last minute. We had a lot of people from all around the area of Owatonna. This year, we’ve got mostly just Owatonna, Steele County people, but that’s not a bad thing because Rochester and Mankato have big rallies going on,” Thul said. “They’re hoping to have 1,600 people today, so I don’t feel bad if we don’t have that big of a crowd because they’re going someplace else, but I think the total number of people who show up to Tea parties in Minnesota today is the number to look for.”
Thul's remarks suggest that organizers in Mankato, Rochester and Owatonna worked together, and that their projected attendance felt far short of their goals. With no rallies in Austin, Fairmont and Slayton, it's likely that total attendance in Southern Minnesota has dropped from last year. Like Sparber, I doubt the local media will take note of this, anymore than that in the Twin Cities can figure it out.
Owatonna's experience is echoed in Willmar. Last year, 350 turned out in the Kandiyohi County hub; this video shows the pickets on both sides of a busy street. This year? No coverage in the paper, but eye witnesses put the count at 50-60, figures that are confirmed by the images found a Facebook page album for the Republican running for the state house seat now held by Alan Juhnke; the "crowd" is about four deep and the yellow tape suggests far more people were expected.
The rally had been billed by local Republicans as a chance to meet CD7 GOP endorsed congressional candidate Lee Byberg.
Did the West Central Tribune opt to avoid embarrassing local Republicans, or did it simply cover the Montevideo rally instead because the event was--well--newsworthy?
Note: Over the weekend, I'll post analysis of the remarks by Tom Hagedorn and Cindy Maves about Americans who aren't taxed enough already--the surprising revival of the old "Lucky Ducky" meme of the Bush years.
Photos: Party pooper (above); Mankato Tea Party, from the Mankato Free Press (middle); Willmar Tea Party (below).
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