Angie Moore planted her yard with lawn signs. Danny Panzella gathered petition signatures. Lin Stevenson rang neighbors’ doorbells.
But one year after the raucous campaign that catapulted the unknown Michael Grimm (R-SI/Brooklyn) into Congress, many Tea Party activists who helped send him to DC feel betrayed.
And Grimm feels annoyed.
The freshman lawmaker told The Post some of his newfound critics aren’t true Tea Partiers at all but “libertarians or 9/11 Truthers who have taken extreme positions and have never shared my overall views. Now that they’ve become irrelevant, they’re trying to say they’re part of the Tea Party.”
Cracks in the Tea Party movement are showing as purists out to slash big government split from pragmatists willing to work with establishment Republicans.
Grimm angered members of the Tea Party with a March statement that called them “extreme.” That came on the heels of Tea Party criticism of Grimm’s votes extending federal spending and reauthorizing the Patriot Act. He voted with House leadership in the summer’s bruising debt-limit battle.
Grimm’s endorsement last week of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, with Tea Party favorites like Reps. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul still in the race, drew dozens of protesters to his district office.
Grimm, a former FBI agent, isn’t the firebrand that activists like Panzella thought they’d be getting. “Grimm said he got involved in politics because he was angry — that he was one of us,” Panzella said.
Moore probably won’t do a lawn- sign push for the congressman’s re-election bid. “I didn’t think that Grimm would be just another professional politician,” she said.
Grimm is a high-profile GOP darling. House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor have headlined fund-raisers for him, and to some Tea Party members, Grimm’s coziness with establishment Republicans is damning.
Panzella says disgruntled right-wingers are muttering about running a primary against Grimm, but it’s too early for anyone to commit.
Staten Island Tea Party founder Frank Santarpia predicts that most Tea Partiers will ultimately stand with Grimm in 2012.
“We helped get Michael Grimm elected,” Santarpia said. “We would not like to see that seat slip back out of Republican hands.”
Despite dimming enthusiasm among campaign foot soldiers, Grimm is confident his Tea Party support remains firm. “We may have our disagreements on tactics, but overall we’re still on the same page.”