Arlington Tea Party Melts Down Over Stadium Endorsement

Arlington Tea Party Melts Down Over Stadium Endorsement

By

James Scott Trimm

On September 8^th the Tarrant County Republican Party Executive Committee, in keeping with principles laid out in the Texas State Republican platform, voted overwhelmingly to oppose a proposal in Arlington to replace the perfectly good ballpark “Global Life” stadium with a smaller new stadium with fewer seats and a retractable roof, as follows.

The passage of this resolution was a major victory for the Save Our Stadium cause! 

The very next day four members of the Board of Directors of the Arlington Tea Party took hypocrisy to new levels.  These “Taxed Enough Already” group “leaders” voted for advocating new taxes, voting to turn their back on conservatism and support the crony capitalism of the new stadium proposal, making the following announcement:

Having considered the issue, we believe the real long term benefits to the City of Arlington far outweigh the arguments to the contrary. The Arlington Tea Party Board of Directors by a majority vote announces our support the for new retractable roof baseball stadium for Arlington. We simply urge all Arlington residents vote YES on the issue on the November 8th ballot.

Mel Moss, Chairman & founder, Jeff Rogers - Board member, Craig Ownby - Board member, Josh Finkenbinder - Board member
Dan Fernandez, President

According to Kelly Canon, who was at the time Vice President of the Arlington Tea Party, this vote was secretly taken at a secret meeting from which she was excluded.  The vote was also outside of the authority of the Board because it was in complete opposition to the stated purpose of the Arlington Tea Party.  The stated purpose of this 501c3 organization is to support “lower taxes” while the Stadium Deal entails new taxes, the exact opposite!  

While the group pushing for a new stadium has put out campaign materials claiming that the proposition includes “no new taxes”, this is in direct contradiction to the statement on the Arlington Texas city website.  In fact the only reason this stadium is going up for an election is because it involves new taxes, if no new taxes were involved the Arlington City Council could have done this without an election.

On September 9^th these Board members announced their vote and on September 10^th they posted it on the Lone Star Tea Party Facebook page.  (The Lone Star Tea Party is a 501c4 organization created by the Arlington Tea Party).  The announcement was met with dozens of negative comments from Arlington Tea Party followers, and a mass exodus of the “membership” (followers) began, with members like Warren Norred announcing their resignations. The Arlington Tea Party was in complete melt down.  Vice President Kelly Canon posted the following response:

Ten days later the former members (followers) of the Arlington Tea Party, under the leadership of the former Arlington Tea Party Vice President Kelly Canon, reorganized under the new name SE Tarrant TeaParty.  The longtime Arlington Tea Party Facebook group (with its 448 members) has now become the “SE Tarrant Tea Party” and retains the original purpose of opposing more taxes and corporate welfare which the majority of the remaining “Board Members” of the old Arlington Tea Party have now abandoned.