The Lynchburg Tea Party plans to exclude the news media and recording devices when two candidates for Congress speak at its next meeting Aug. 5.
State Sen. Robert Hurt, the Republican candidate in the 5th District, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte of the 6th District have agreed to speak at the Tea Party’s monthly meeting, to be held in the Monte Carlo restaurant.
Mark Lloyd, chairman of the Lynchburg Tea Party, said the group’s members didn’t want the media to be present because it would create a “circus” atmosphere.
“At the request of several of our members, they would like to have a personal conversation with the candidates,” Lloyd said.
“It will be a more personal, one-on-one type of setting without the lights and microphones,” Lloyd said.
The meeting will be limited to the Lynchburg Tea Party’s signed-up members, plus its “regular participants” who have shown up for most of its meetings, Lloyd said.
A meeting of the Lynchburg Tea Party on May 6 drew a crowd of more than 50 people into Monte Carlo, along with cameras from two television stations and a newspaper reporter.
Seven candidates who were seeking the Republican nomination to oppose Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello spoke during the May meeting, as did former Rep. Virgil Goode.
Goode became the top newsmaker of the meeting when he made it clear he would stay out of this November’s election. A Tea Party participant asked the question that prompted Goode to say “no” to his becoming a candidate.
“It was elbow-to-elbow in that room, and nobody could see anything because of the cameras and all that,” Lloyd said.
Many people in the crowd seemed not to hear Goode’s low-volume response saying he wouldn’t be a candidate, but it was reported the next day in The News & Advance.
“It was the distraction of the media” that caused regular participants in Tea Party events to demand that the media be excluded from the August meeting, Lloyd said.
The candidates didn’t object to excluding the media from the meeting, Lloyd said. When he brought up the group’s wish to keep news media and recording devices out of the meeting, no one from the two campaigns objected, Lloyd said.
Goodlatte’s spokeswoman, Kathryn Rexrode, said that because he would be an “invited guest” at the meeting, he agreed to the sponsors’ format.
“Mr. Goodlatte was invited by the Tea Party folks, and that was the format that they suggested,” Rexrode said.
Lloyd said he didn’t know whether other Tea Party groups around the country have excluded the news media from meetings where candidates were speaking.
Rexrode said Goodlatte has spoken to several other Tea Party groups.
Lloyd said he didn’t think the Lynchburg Tea Party had any alternative sites for its meetings, because it has an agreement with Monte Carlo to meet there the first Thursday of each month through December.
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