Tuesday, 04 Dec 2012 07:52 AM
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Former House majority leader Dick Armey has quit FreedomWorks, the tea party group that he helped establish, telling the organization it must stop using his name and some of the literature he produced.
In a terse Nov. 30 resignation email to FreedomWorks president and CEO Matt Kibbe, Armey wrote, “Effective immediately I expect that FreedomWorks shall remove my name, image, and signature from all its letters, print media, postings, web sites, videos, testimonials, endorsements, fund raising materials, and social media, including but not limited to Facebook and Twitter.”
He also said he expected to be paid through end of the year, which he said was the end of his consulting contract.
“Henceforth FreedomWorks shall be prohibited from using my name, image, or signature in any way or for any purpose without my written permission or in the event of my death, without my heirs written permission.”
Armey specifically banned FreedomWorks from using “Hitting the Ground Running,” a guide he had written to help newly elected House Republicans. He even asked for his official Congressional portrait to be returned to his Texas home.
The Washington Post reported that Max Pappas, FreedomWorks’ vice president for public policy and government affairs, has also left the group.
The news of Armey’s departure was broken by the website Mother Jones which said, “The tone of the memo suggests that this was not an amicable separation.”
Armey told Mother Jones, "The top management team of FreedomWorks was taking a direction I thought was unproductive, and I thought it was time to move on with my life. At this point, I don't want to get into the details. I just want to go on with my life.
"They were matters of principle. It's how you do business as opposed to what you do. But I don't want to be the guy to create problems."
The move came less than a month after Republicans lost the presidential election and seats in both houses of Congress.
Under Armey’s guidance, FreedomWorks helped several tea party-backed candidates, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee, unseat sitting GOP members and win election to Congress. But a bid to repeat its success in Utah by ousting Sen. Orrin Hatch failed in this year’s primaries.
"Obviously I was not happy with the election results," Armey told Mother Jones. "We might've gotten better results if we had gone in a different direction. But it isn't that I got my nose out of line because we should've done better."
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I personally never donated to Freedom Works. It felt too much like a Republican Party entity.
I always make contributions directly to the candidate of MY choice rather than to a "group" like Freedom Works who obviously have overhead charges and employee costs NOT associated with any particular Tea Party candidate. I don't have the win/loss record of Freedom Works but it was NOT 100% win. I was never enthralled with Dick Armey even when he was in congress. PWS
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