Group files to get Tea Party on ballot

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - The Michigan Secretary of State's office received 59,400 signatures Wednesday to place the Tea Party on the state's November ballot, but Michigan Republican Chairman Ron Weiser said the move is a trick by GOP opponents to confuse voters.

"In a Hail Mary-style last ditch effort, desperate stooges" of the Democratic Party "have attempted to confuse Michigan voters by hijacking the name of the Tea Party movement," Weiser said in a statement. "Every true Tea Party organization has disavowed this effort and identified it for what it is: base political maneuvering."

Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer said his party is not involved and that he doesn't know the men listed on the filing.

"We don't have anything to do with this," Brewer told The Associated Press. "I'm focused on getting as many votes for Democratic candidates as I can in the fall, and leave these other parties to their own devices."

Tea Party candidates on the November ballot could draw votes away from other party's nominees. Some Republicans see Wednesday's filing as a ploy to trick voters into picking Tea Party candidates rather than Republican ones, even if the official Tea Party candidates have little in common with traditional tea party values.

The signatures were filed Wednesday afternoon by Eric Tincher of Kalamazoo. Mark Steffek was listed as the party chairman and John Roby was listed as secretary. Steffek registered The Tea Party as political party committee with the secretary of state's office in May.

A message seeking comment was left Wednesday for Steffek, who lives in Reese in Tuscola County. A phone number couldn't be found for Tincher.

The number of signatures filed Wednesday is far more than the 38,013 needed to get a new party on the November ballot. If the filers also met the requirement to get at least 100 signatures from at least half of the state's 15 congressional districts, they could nominate candidates to run in the general election.

Those candidates would have be nominated by Aug. 3, the date of the primary election, said Kelly Chesney of the secretary of state's office. The last time a political party that wasn't already qualified for the November ballot filed petitions was in the 2000 election cycle, when both the U.S. Taxpayers Party and the Green Party filed, she said.

An umbrella group called the Michigan Tea Party Alliance says on its website that the tea party groups it represents aren't interested in creating a separate third party.

"We are not associated with any attempts to form a third party in the state of Michigan," the alliance said in a statement. "We believe that such efforts are unproductive and unwise at this time. The history of third party movements in this country is one of division and defeat."

Weiser said the Michigan GOP continues to work with tea party activists on a variety of issues.