Don’t miss the LVRJ piece on the latest with Tea Party of Nevada/third party candidate Scott Ashjian.  He says he’ll attend the Searchlight Tea Party rally even though he is not an invited speaker.  And called Nevada’s tea party groups “paranoid” and “afraid.”  Here’s the latest:

Three sources at Tea Party Express (TPE) told me Ashjian contacted them last week to ask if he could get on the speaking agenda at the Searchlight Tea Party rally.  This attempted circumvention of Nevada’s tea party organizers occurred because Ashjian and his new political party have already been denounced by over 20 Nevada grassroots groups (which I wrote about last Wednesday).  TPE leaders told Ashjian he could not have at the podium, based primarily on opposition from the state’s grassroots activist-organizers.

According to the dozen or so Tea Party/grassroots organizers and leaders I’ve talked to in the weeks since the “Tea Party of Nevada” (TPN) political party filed papers with the Secretary of State, the shunning of Ashjian and TPN is based on (1) the fact that nobody active in the grassroots had ever heard of him before a few weeks ago, nor have they heard from him since, and (2) concern that a third party candidate will pull votes from the GOP nominee and hand the US Senate election to Harry Reid.  As one of them put it to me this morning (name withheld because, he said, “I do not want the focus to be on me or my name.  The one and only focus here should be the cause, not the individuals and personalities”):

“If Ashjian really believes he can beat Harry Reid as a first-time, unknown third party candidate, which is what he keeps claiming in all these media appearances, he is, frankly, a fool.  That being the case, why should any of us embrace him or take him seriously?  We may well all agree on the principles, but many leaders in the grassroots are also pragmatic and want to be smart about our strategy.  We want to win elections.  We’re not out here just randomly ranting and raving.”

He added:

“What I see from Ashjian so far is a slick presentation and a bunch of unrealistic claims about what he can do.  Frankly, I don’t have time for that nonsense even if he is a conservative.  I’m interested in figuring out which conservative candidate has the right set of core principles and is most electable and then pitting that person against Harry Reid in the general election.  Ashjian can’t win the general and is a distraction, and I say the quicker we all forget about him, the better.”

Debbie Landis of Anger Is Brewing and Sheila Danish of Reject Reid, two of the signatories on last week’s big disavowal document, both agreed and said they echo and endorse the remarks.

In his comments to the RJ, Ashjian rejected suggestions that he should give up his third party candidacy and join the Tea Party groups in their effort to work within the current party system:

“By them saying I should fall in line is an insult,” Ashjian said. “I’m not asking for an invitation. I think they should get behind me, not fall in line like sheep. They’re so paranoid, it makes me think they have weak candidates and they’re afraid.

“The more they attack, the more they show their hand, and I mean that across party lines. It’s not politics as usual. We’re running a different campaign, and they’re scared to death.”

My grassroots guy had this response:

“An insult?  What is an insult is that this guy is asking for a spot on the podium, yet as far as I know he has never attended a grassroots event or picked up the phone and reached out to a single tea party or grassroots group in Nevada.  To this day, we have not heard a peep from him.  I think he should have reached out to us prior to filing his party paperwork, but at the very least, it would have been in order – and it would have been smart – to start reaching out to us right after that, to at least get some conversations going.”

And:

“Did he really think we would get behind him when we don’t even know him?  Does that make any sense?  Any candidate with two brain cells to rub together knows you have to make some calls, send some emails, have some friendly conversations with people in a position to support you and help you reach your target voters.  You don’t just show up on Ralston’s show and Talk Radio and start tooting your own horn and think that is going to get you anywhere with the people who work in the trenches, that they will suddenly “get behind you.”  It’s ridiculous.”

And:

“Scared to death?  No.  But we are legitimately concerned that Ashjian may gain traction with voters who are not smart about electoral politics, and that he’ll siphon off votes in the general and help get Harry Reid elected.  If Ashjian is more interested in spouting off and calling us all “paranoid” and “afraid” than he is in being smart and helping us work a viable strategy to actually beat Reid, I question his sincerity and his credibility.”

Stay tuned, Dear Readers, for there is sure to be more.  With recent Rasmussen polls showing that generic Tea Party candidates could earn as much as 17% of the vote, as long as Ashjian is in the race this story is not going away.