{"id":1872,"date":"2010-04-21T17:26:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/04\/21\/the-new-face-of-the-north-countrys-tea-party\/"},"modified":"2010-04-21T17:26:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:26:00","slug":"the-new-face-of-the-north-countrys-tea-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/04\/21\/the-new-face-of-the-north-countrys-tea-party\/","title":{"rendered":"The new face of the North Country’s tea party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, Doug Hoffman was the undisputed champ of the North Country’s tea party movement.<\/p>\n

He was a national icon, and the accountant from Lake Placid emerged from anonymity to come within a whisker of unseating Republican and Democratic candidates.<\/p>\n

Hoffman is back, of course, hoping to win the GOP nomination in the 23rd congressional district race. <\/p>\n

But there’s a fresh face attracting a lot of attention these days in Plattsburgh tea party organizer Mark Barie.<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: Barie and I partnered on a Mountain Lake PBS TV show for a couple of years. <\/p>\n

He was a regular; I was an occasional guest. I find him to be smart, rigorous, with serious views about the economy and the role of government in society<\/p>\n

Barie has diligently avoided some of the queasy excesses of the tea party movement. <\/p>\n

He’s not visibly aligned with nutty talk-show hosts like Glenn Beck. He avoids the race and militant language that distracts from the movement’s core message.<\/p>\n

In an editorial on Wednesday, the Plattsburgh Press-Republican<\/a> took note of Barie’s growing profile.<\/p>\n

He’s almost certain to play a role in the upcoming congressional race, perhaps a more significant role than many of the local GOP county chairs in the 23rd district.<\/p>\n

Will he support Doug Hoffman? Will he go with Republican Matt Doheny? <\/p>\n

And how aggressive will he be toward Bill Owens, the Democratic incumbent, who is a long-time acquaintance of Barie’s and another Mountain Lake PBS alum?<\/p>\n

Over the long term, it will also be interesting to see how activists like Barie translate their passion and their ideas.<\/p>\n

Will their candidates win elections? Will they coalesce around policies that solve real problems? Will they govern well?<\/p>\n

For now, Barie has made huge strides in raising his own profile and creating a new political center of gravity in the North Country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, Doug Hoffman was the undisputed champ of the North Country’s tea party movement. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}