Tea Party leader says Roby ‘not conservative enough,’ may challenge her in GOP primary

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February 18, 2015

Becky Gerritson speaks on Fox News about the IRS scandal

WETUMPKA, Ala. — Wetumpka TEA Party President Becky Gerritson says she is praying about launching a primary challenge against 2nd Congressional District Republican Rep. Martha Roby.

Roby is “not conservative enough,” Gerritson said at the Wetumpka TEA Party meeting this week. “I don’t feel like she represents me or most of the people in this room.”

Though Gerritson is known locally as an outspoken grassroots leader, she briefly burst onto the national scene in 2013 by delivering an emotional testimony before Congress following revelations that the IRS had been targeting conservative organizations, including her own.

Since then, Gerritson has made sporadic guest appearances on Fox News and spoken at various conservative conferences and meetings around the country.

Wetumpka TEA Party member Mellanie Wallace told the Wetumpka Herald she thinks Gerritson would be a “better conservative for our district that [sic] what we have.”

A primary battle against Roby would be a difficult fight for any challenger, statistically speaking. In 2014 95.9 percent of congressional incumbents were re-elected, in a year that saw unusually dramatic turnover. Roby has not faced serious primary opposition since being elected in 2010 and coasted to re-election in the 2014 General with 67 percent of the vote.

But Gerritson has proven herself to be an effective grassroots organizer. Perhaps most notably, while Gov. Bentley’s Amendment 1 campaign to borrow money from the Alabama Trust Fund in 2013 passed by a wide margin statewide, Gerritson’s group organized a counter “Don’t bust the trust” campaign that led to Elmore County being one of a very small number of counties where the amendment was voted down.

Roby, meanwhile, has steadily worked her way up the ranks in Washington, even landing a spot on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which is particularly important in the 2nd Congressional District where the stability of two major military installations depends on the appropriations process. But she has occasionally found herself being targeted by tea party-associated groups in Washington, such as the Club for Growth, who targeted her in their “primary my congressman campaign” but failed to gain much traction.

Gerritson has hinted in years past that she may consider a congressional run. We may soon find out if 2016 will be the year she decides to pull the trigger.