Don't fear the Reepers

B-Daddy, Michael A. Schwartz and Jenny Erikson reach over from the right.

This week, we decided to get to know a few so-called Tea Party types. It turns out, they’re real people—even good people—who just happen to be discovering their political voices for the first time. Their voices can be abrasive, sure, but empowerment, overall, is a beautiful thing. They’re also willing to talk, even to lefties like us. Here are three conservatives who are reasonable, intelligent and ready to set aside rhetoric to talk policy.

B-Daddy
Age: 52
Occupation: IT manager
Blog: TheLiberatorToday.blogspot.com

B-Daddy’s real name is Brian, but he asked us to withhold his surname because he works for the federal government and doesn’t want his job politicized. The “Unofficial Chief Ideologist of the San Diego County Tea Party Movement” was born in Detroit, grew up in Orange County and spent 22 years as a Navy man, which led to settling down in San Diego. He was a registered Libertarian for nearly 30 years, content to fight for his core beliefs on the outskirts of conservative politics.

Then, in 2008, he was fed up with the fringe and signed up with the Republican Party. But it wasn’t until 2009 and the emergence of the local Tea Party that he found a way to strike a balance between supporting Republicans and promoting a Libertarian message.

While most Tea Partiers have their eyes on the White House and Congress, Brian’s focused on the San Diego City Council. More than anyone, he’s on newly elected City Councilmember Lorie Zapf ’s case. He blogs about every encounter with her office: If she leaves him a voicemail message, he blogs it. If he gets a wishy-washy response from one of her staffers, he calls her out.

“She campaigned saying the right things, in my view,” he says. “I want her to execute her promises more effectively, and so I tend to be a little more critical of the people I care about. Some of the more left-wing members, like Todd Gloria, I figure he’s hopeless.”

That’s not to say that Brian doesn’t have respect for liberals. He admires Obama’s decision to freeze federal wages and thinks local government should follow suit. He also appreciated the president’s speech after the Tucson shooting.

“One thing I always tell people, including my wife, after every election: When the other team wins, it’s never as bad as you think it’s going to be,” Brian says. “And when your team wins, it’s never as good as you hoped it would be.”

Michael A. Schwartz
Age: 34
Occupation: Trust manager
Affiliation: NRA Members’ Council of Greater San Diego

A few weeks ago, Schwartz heard me talk politics on Michael Slater’s new morning talk show on KFMB 760-AM. Within hours, he had contacted me through Facebook to engage in a brief, friendly debate on the Constitution.

“The Second Amendment is a subject I am passionate about and I would be happy… no thrilled… to take you to a range and teach you how to safely handle a variety of firearms,” he wrote. “It is amazingly fun and educational. I am not a nut.”

The Santee gun enthusiast has a self-deprecating sense of humor. He’s certainly not a nut. He realizes the perception some on the left have of gun-rights advocates, and that’s the only thing he’s setting out to disarm.

Like many, Schwartz is new to politics, but unlike most on the right, it doesn’t have a lot to do with Obama. Rather, he said he had an awakening after a Bureau of Land Management agent hassled him about a shotgun in 2007.

“I just got really, really down about that, and when I was done feeling down about it, I decided, OK, time to do something,” Schwartz says. “So, I got active.”

He started by attending NRA meetings (he’s now vice president of the local chapter, though he speaks only for himself). He followed that with a successful fundraiser for San Diego County Sheriff candidate Jay La Suer. I asked him whether that felt like an accomplishment.

“I wish at some point it did feel good,” he says. “It never feels like it’s enough. That only opened up 10 different, other doors. I did this and now there’s 10 other things, and each one of those things opened up 10 other things. You’re never done. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

Right now, that means reaching out to liberals (like City-Beat) but also groups that traditionally are skeptical of pro-gun types. For example, his next big project will be an NRA seminar for the gay community called “Refuse to Be a Victim,” hosted in partnership with the Log Cabin Republicans.

“I don’t want to preach to the choir; I want to get out there and convert people,” Schwartz says. “I want to go and find people that don’t even know they’re Second Amendment people yet…. I don’t want the Second Amendment to be a battleground. I want Democrats and Republicans to agree we have a right to keep and bear arms. I don’t want it to be a feather in anyone’s cap. I don’t want any party to be the party of the Second Amendment. I want it to no longer be an issue.”

Jenny Erikson
Age: 28
Occupation: Freelance writer
Blog: JennyErikson.com

A San Diego native, Erikson had been active in Republican politics since she was a kid, but in 2005 she just stopped caring. Republicans, in her words, were spending like “drunken Democrats,” and she tuned out.

That is, until Aug. 29, 2008, the day John McCain announced his running mate.

“I would have to say that the trigger for me,” she says, stopping to make sure the word “trigger” didn’t offend. “John McCain got nominated as our Republican candidate, and I was underwhelmed, to say the least, so I was kind of keeping an eye on it, but not really involved. All of a sudden, this announcement came out that he had picked Sarah Palin…. I spent hours poring over everything I could find about her, and—oh my gosh—I thought she was amazing.”

She saw parallels: Erikson had set aside her dreams of law school when she became pregnant; Palin represented the feminist dream of being a mother but also a successful career woman. Erikson had been keeping a “mommy blog,” a log of her experiences as a new mother, and couldn’t resist crafting a political post about Palin, and then another, until eventually she had to separate the two.

The election was a disappointment, but she bounced back by joining Twitter and attending San Diego’s first Tea Party event in February 2009. Suddenly, she was getting paid to contribute on other sites, hosting conservative podcasts and helping build a small band of conservative women, the Smart Girl Politics, into an organization with more than 30,000 members.

Erikson is not a “Palinbot,” she says, and has no problem acknowledging that the Democratic Party “has a lot of good things going for it.” Though she foresees little cooperation in Congress, she says she knows her liberal friends’ hearts are in the right place.

Looking back, Erikson says she feels almost ashamed that she dropped out of politics in 2005. She won’t make the same mistake again.

“I’m sure I will be frustrated in some way or another the rest of my life,” she says. “The thing is, life isn’t perfect, and all you can do is inform people. If you have an opinion about politics, tell your friends. You agree to do interviews with liberal people so that you can make your voice heard. Don’t be silent. We were silent too long, and I think that is what led to the downfall of the conservative majority, starting with President Bush.”

Write to davem@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

Correction: This story originally reported B-Daddy age as 57 and Jenny Erikson's age as 34. He's actually 52, she's 28 and we are very sorry for the mistake. We also incorrectly identified Stormy Daniels as a Libertarian porn star running for governor--she was considering a run for Senate Louisiana. We have deleted the reference because, after checking with B-Daddy, he was not sure whether it was that political porn star, or another, that had contributed to his discontent with the Libertarian party.