Nevada Tea Party Split on Candidates

None of the presidential candidates has locked up decisive support from the tea party in Nevada, which is bad news for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as they try to keep their hopes alive against front-runner Mitt Romney, Politico reports.

At this point, Gingrich appears to be faring best among tea partyers. A poll released Thursday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows that of those who “strongly support” the tea party movement in Nevada, Gingrich leads with 37 percent, followed by Romney with 27 percent, Santorum with 20 percent, and Ron Paul with 9 percent.

Among those who said they support the tea party “somewhat” or “only a little,” Romney garnered a majority.

“Romney is a product of the Republican Party. The whole grass-roots effort is to get away from exactly that politics as usual,” Karen Steelmon, the president of the Las Vegas Tea Party and the state coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, told Politico.

“The tea party is working to get people more involved, but it’s going to take a lot more to break the hold that the parties have on the political system in our country. The movement, in my opinion, here in Las Vegas, it’s extremely fractured.”