Top to bottom: ohioan Vicki McKee stands in allegiance during the rally; henthorn leads his group through a packed Metro station; a spirited Betty Kleinhenz of ohio walks toward the rally.
“Well, I do believe in the flat tax,”
Henthorn rejoinders gently. “And, golly, what else? I can’t even remember.” “I’ve got an extremely different
platform,” he’ll tell me later. “Most poli- ticians would see my platform as the kiss of death.” “So you don’t expect to win?” I say. “No, no, no. I’m going to win. I’m just
not going to be a career politician.” Henthorn may get many votes. In
the current race for Ohio’s open Sen- ate seat, Republican Rob Portman is trouncing Democrat Lee Fisher, per- haps because Portman’s ads savage his foe for his ties to Obama. And the area around Dayton is a Tea Party strong- hold. The South Montgomery County Liberty Group can lure 300 people to a meeting. I’ll hear varying assessments as to why this is so. Henthorn thinks that greater Dayton
is patriotic, in part, because sprawling Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is there. One middle-age bus rider, Sue Nann- arone, a teacher, remembers hearing the fighter jets flying over her childhood home, cracking the sound barrier. “It made you feel proud,” she says. Donna Schlagheck, the political
science department chair at Dayton’s Wright State University, has a different explanation. “Southwestern Ohio culture is extremely conservative, Bible-belt, pa- triotic and stunned by globalization’s impact,” Schlagheck will say in an e-mail, noting the closure of several Dayton- area GM plants during the past decade. “And there is no discounting the racism in this Mason-Dixon region. I suspect we’re seeing a convergence of culture, economy and fear of a future represent- ed by a black president.” On the bus, I ask Ann Hucke, a
57-year-old ambulance billing special- ist, about the accusations of racism frequently lofted at the Tea Party. She bristles. “I grew up in Oakland, Cali- fornia, which is probably the most diversified city in the United States,” she says, “and it’s not like I live in a
lily-white neighborhood now. There’s Section 8 housing right near me.” Hucke has grown skeptical, though,
especially at work. “We see outrageous abuse,” she says. “It’s the people on Med- icaid who cause the problems. These jackasses stub their toe and then call an ambulance. They have such a sense of entitlement.” Hucke is a Christian who has spent
years evangelizing at shopping malls, and by her lights, our once-godly nation has become so decayed — so crime-rid- den and secular — that it’s time to draw lines. She supports racial profiling, for instance. “We’ve got Mexican people streaming across the border, and we can’t profile that?” she says. “And who’s flying airplanes into buildings? Mus- lims! You know how they treat Muslims over in Israel? They stop and search them. Because they’re the ones who are doing it.”
trundle down the steps. There are 26 men here from Ohio and 25 women. Two-thirds appear to be older than 55. I do not see a person of color among them. There is an elderly couple with their 11-year-old grandson, who is wear- ing a T-shirt from Emmanuel Christian School, where he is a fifth-grader. There is a heavyset and contemplative man wearing a blue T-shirt that says “Ameri- can Patriot.” It is 5 in the morning, and they are here in the nation’s capital to take a stand. After a nap, we meet, per the lieuten-
W
ant colonel’s instructions, in the lobby at 7:30. We make our way to the Metro stop en masse. Quickly, though, our neatly bunched group falls apart. The underground corridors are choked with Tea Party ralliers, and they are hot and fetid with human scent. The crowd is so compressed that it seems on the verge of a stampede, and at Foggy Bottom, it takes nearly half an hour to shuffle toward the exit. Two of the three long escalators are broken, and when a sole traveler moves toward one, he’s halted by a shrill voice in the crowd: “Stay away
OctOber 24, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 13
hen we pull into the Wardman Park Mar- riott in Woodley Park, I scramble off first and watch the passengers
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