Interesting move.

From Team Tark:

May 20, 2010

The Tarkanian campaign issued the following statement in response to the Tea Party Express release.

“We have been respectful of the consulting firm making big money off the Tea Party Express, but this is a pure money grab by these commissioned California media buyers who are endorsing a 100 percent NARAL-rated Democrat over conservative Republicans in Idaho.

“They should stop telling tea party activists in Nevada and Idaho who should run and how to vote and mind their own ‘business’ – so to speak.

“The Tea Party Express is leading the corporatization of the Tea Party movement and it’s distasteful.”

- Tarkanian consultant James Fisfis

I guess everyone loves the Tea Party Express until they endorse The Other Guy (or Gal).

(Update — 7:14 a.m. on 5/21/10): Team Tark says they shot that arrow out not because of the TPE endorsement, but because TPE suggested Tark should drop out of the race.)

But Team Tark is in good company.

Many Tea Party and grassroots types in Nevada, including Debbie Landis of Action is Brewing, have previously rejected TPE endorsements and “influence” and “manipulation.”

This has happened in part because TPE is not run by average, every-day Tea Party peeps.  It is run by “Ace” political operatives.  At least, the PAC arm of the organization is.

But in a statement of explanation put out by Joe Wierzbick of TPE a few weeks back, he/they defended their Angle-endorsement thusly (providing excerpts because it was very long):

The answer to the question of “Why did we endorse Sharron Angle?” is rather simple for us to answer. We’ve been impressed with Angle since we first worked with her during the Our Country Deserves Better Committee’s efforts in the “Defeat Harry Reid” campaign we launched early in 2009. This is from a time that pre-dates the Tea Party Express and the tea party movement.

Sharron was immediately responsive to our outreach to help build a movement against Reid in the state. Now at this time the polls were in a gradual, but steady, descent for Reid. Political pundits at the time, however, were insistent that this was just a temporary blip on the radar. They said that Reid was a master politician who would fight back, and that to suggest he would lose was nonsense. Boy what a different world we live in today!

We did extensive research on Sharron, having known of her on a cursory basis for years before we launched our “Defeat Harry Reid” campaign, and as we did more research we liked what we saw. We respected her record. We liked how she was tenacious in fighting for her beliefs, and resilient in pressing ahead even after facing defeat.

While some have said that they didn’t see Sharron as a good “team player” who could work to build coalitions and compromise, we felt differently.

And:

We believe that at a time like this, the remedy should be someone who was proven and tested to say “NO” to the sweetly-scented allure of feel-good liberalism. We need those who are so loyal to their principles that others might view them as obstinate, to serve as an anchor for conservative principles in Congress. Another “YES” vote won’t do when the recent history shows a disturbing willingness to “sell out” for some perceived political gain or media adulation.

And unlike some people who view Angle’s past losses to Heller and Raggio as a sign of weakness, we see the issue of Sharron’s viability as a candidate differently. She won her State Assembly seat 4 times. And then she ran within a whisker of winning in her campaign for Congress (against Dean Heller and Dawn Gibbons) and State Senate (against the politically powerful Bill Raggio). The fact that a conservative insurgent candidate has twice challenged the powerful establishment of her own party and come within ½% of winning in both high-profile elections demonstrates to us an impressive ability given her anti-establishment pedigree. We feel our endorsement and Independent Expenditure campaign will give her dramatically higher name recognition with voters across the state – which is all that her campaign is really lacking at this point to be competitive.

Thus, after seeing Sharron Angle in action up close and personal, we were happy to see her first considering a run (early last year) and then entering the race later in the year. We had occasional contact with Sharron over the many months since the launch of the “Defeat Harry Reid” campaign. But then we’ve also had contact and worked somewhat closely with just about every candidate for Senate who is challenging Harry Reid.

And:

Our Feelings Towards The Other Candidates

We’re not interested in beating up other candidates and handing Harry Reid a wounded challenger for November. So you’ll see a positive tone to our ads – at least as long as those in this race retain a similar civility with us at the Tea Party Express and Sharron Angle as an individual.

Wonder if TPE will think the Tark comments today fall under the heading of “civility”?  I’ll be curious to see whether, when and how they fire back.