The Tea Party’s Most Powerful Supporter

Meet Sal Russo. He is the man behind the Tea Party Express and successful Tea Party candidates in four states, including most recently, Christine O’Donnell. In the year and a half since his group, based in California, began gaining traction, Russo has raised over $5 million for Tea Party candidates, making the Tea Party Express their single largest independent supporter. But within the Tea Party’s ranks, Russo, a longtime GOP insider, is a bitterly divisive figure. And part of the reason is that of that $5 million, $3 million was either paid to his own political consulting firm or another one run by his wife. “They are the classic top-down organization run by GOP consultants, and it is the antithesis of what the Tea Party movement is about,” said a spokesman for one branch of the Tea Party. But Russo believes that the activists who criticize him for his intensely political background are “nuts and crackpots.”