Garnering 300,000 Votes, Florida TEA Party Says We'll Be Baaack

TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Chairman Fred O'Neal said the party's 20 candidates received a collective total of more than 300,000 votes in Tuesday's election.

TEA hopeful Jason Weakley ran the most competitive race, garnering 29 percent in state House District 96 against three-term Rep. Ari Abraham Porth, D-Coral Springs. There was no Republican candidate in the contest.

Encouraged by its initial showing, O'Neal said the party would step up electoral efforts in 2012.

"This is very important since the Tea Party was just formed a year ago and we faced incredible opposition from the Republican Party," O'Neal said. The Orlando attorney alleged that the GOP filed "bogus lawsuits," sent "hundreds of thousands of illegal mailers" and made radio spots and phone calls in a coordinated campaign to derail TEA Party candidates.

Despite the GOP's dismissal of TEA as "fake tea," O'Neal said his party's endorsement of Marco Rubio and Rick Scott helped those Republicans win their U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races.

"It should be noted that the TEA Party openly endorsed Rick Scott the weekend before the primary when Bill McCollum was ahead by 10 points in some polls and that our endorsement was recognized by the media as being one of the major keys to Scott's victory," O'Neal asserted.

O'Neal said TEA leaders will meet Friday to map out initial strategy for the 2012 elections, with plans to field "over 100 candidatesfrom the U.S. Senate to the Florida House in the next election."