WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- A dozen Tea Party political action committees and 24 Tea Party fundraising committees have raised little money, U.S. election and tax records indicate.
The Tea Party-affiliated PAC raising the most money -- $4.4 million so far in this election cycle -- is TeaPartyExpress.org, run by Republican Party veterans including consultant Sal Russo, an aide to Ronald Reagan when he was California's governor, USA Today reported.
The other PACs and fundraising committees have raised much less, the newspaper said.
Tea Party leaders say they are building the political groundwork to aid candidates, from local sheriffs' races to congressional contexts, in November, the newspaper said.
But no matter how large, Tea Party fundraising suggests Tea Party activists "are serious ... and understand that parties, including small upstart parties, need money," Costas Panagopoulos, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy at New York's Fordham University, told the newspaper.
PACs can collect no more than $5,000 a year from an individual.
By contrast, fundraising committees, known as 527 organizations for the section of the tax code they operate under, are not regulated by the Federal Election Commission or by state elections commissions and can raise unlimited amounts of money.
The Tea Party movement emerged in 2009 through a series of locally and nationally coordinated protests.
The protests were partially in response to the bailout of the U.S. financial system, the U.S. economic stimulus package and the U.S. healthcare reform bills.
