Growing Tea With Subnational Roots: Tea Party Affiliation, Factionalism, and GOP Politics in State Legislatures

• Author: Charles Hunt,Stella M. Rouse,Kristen Essel
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211041150
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211041150

American Politics Research

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211041150

journals.sagepub.com/home/apr

Article

The influence of the Tea Party movement in contemporary

American politics remains a curiosity. While much has been

written about the Tea Party as a grass roots movement, less is

known about its role and influence within party politics and

inside legislative institutions. This is important because The

Tea Party Caucus and its close successors, such as the

Freedom Caucus,1 have purposefully disrupted the govern-

ing capacity of the Republican Party and have potentially

threatened the party’s long-term viability. At the national

level, this disruption was often on display throughout the

presidency of Barack Obama2 and is cited as a factor that

helped pave the way for the election of Donald Trump in

2016 and his eventual defeat in 2020 (Ball, 2016; Gervais &

Morris, 2018; Kabaservice, 2020). However, the discord has

also played out in state legislatures. Take for example the

Texas legislature. In 2017, the Tea Party-aligned House

Freedom Caucus, comprised of 12 Republican members,

became known for their “highly vocal and confrontational

tactics to challenge House Speaker Joe Strauss and other

mainstream Republicans” (Montgomery, 2017). In one

prominent case, the House Freedom Caucus was able to hold

up a “sanctuary cities” bill until they successfully amended it

with provisions allowing local law enforcement officers to

question people about their immigration status during traffic

stops (Montgomery, 2017). Members of the caucus viewed

the revisions made to the “sanctuary cities” bill as an exam-

ple of how the caucus influenced legislative decisions within

the Republican-led Texas House (Montgomery, 2017).

Despite its status as the most significant conservative

political movement in the 21st century (Gervais & Morris,

2018), little is known about the underlying characteristics of

officeholders who affiliate with the Tea Party. This reflects a

lingering disagreement in both the scholarly literature and in

the broader culture about the true intentions of the Tea Party,

and what its influence indicates about the modern Republican

Party. Is the Tea Party little more than an ideological move-

ment, intent only on shifting the Republican Party farther to

the right? Or is it a truly factional movement with more

dynamic characteristics, with the goal of destabilizing or

destroying the GOP? We find evidence that the latter is a

much truer depiction of the Tea Party; one that is reflective of

factional movements. The two party system in the U.S.

forces factions to infiltrate one of the two major parties rather

than operate independently as a third party where they would

gain little influence or electoral momentum (Blum, 2020).

The Tea Party is indeed an ideologically extreme movement,

but its emergence has been equally fueled by anti-establish-

ment, anti-government sentiment that transcends ideology.

1041150

APRXXX10.1177/1532673X211041150American Politics ResearchRouse et al.

research-article

2021

1University of Maryland, College Park, USA

2Boise State University, ID, USA

3Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Charles Hunt, Boise State University, 1910 West University Drive, Boise,

ID 83725-0001, USA.

Email: charleshunt@boisestate.edu

Growing Tea With Subnational Roots:

Tea Party Affiliation, Factionalism, and

GOP Politics in State Legislatures

Stella M. Rouse1, Charles Hunt2, and Kristen Essel3

Abstract

Most research has examined the influence of the Tea Party as a social movement or loose organization, but less is known

about its influence within legislative party politics, especially at the state level. In this paper, we argue that in this context the

Tea Party is primarily an intraparty faction that has caused significant divisions inside the Republican Party. Using an original

dataset of legislators across 13 states for the years 2010 to 2013, we examine legislator and district-level characteristics

that predict state legislators’ affiliation with the Tea Party. Our results reveal that in some respects legislators affiliated with

the Tea Party are a far-right wing of the Republican Party. However, by other measures that capture anti-establishment

political sentiment, Tea Party affiliated legislators comprise a factional group attempting to transform the Party in ways that

go beyond ideology. These findings have important implications for the future prospects of the GOP.

Keywords

factions, parties, Republican Party, state legislatures, Tea Party

2022, Vol. 50(2) 242 –254