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Blair County Tea Party seeks to expand influence in Pa.

With local elections days away and another national fight on the horizon, Blair County Tea Party members met Friday in Altoona for their annual gathering — their first ever under a unified Republican government in Washington, D.C.

Both the setting and the mood had changed from past years: Now indoors at the Bavarian Hall, the crowd and speakers celebrated President Donald Trump’s victory and called for renewed efforts to defend his government. It was a noticeable change from past meetings, where attendees called for resistance against federal overreach under then-President Barack Obama.

“Last November we voted in an agenda — a new agenda, your agenda,” said state Rep. Rick Saccone, R-Jefferson Hills, who is seeking the GOP nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., next year. “That agenda is to simplify the tax code, to reduce government spending.”

And while standard tea party issues like taxes and national debt were mentioned, the deeper message was that conservatives must seize the remaining levers of power in Harrisburg and Washington.

Saccone described Trump’s enemies — the news media, college faculty, left-wing activists among them — as a six-pronged force constantly challenging the executive. Only by voting out figures like Casey could Trump’s agenda be enforced, he said.

The message was the same at other levels. Gubernatorial candidate Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York, didn’t make it as planned, but in an address supporting him, state Rep. John D McGinnis, R-Altoona, compared the state senator directly to the president.

“I heard somebody say, ‘Scott Wagner is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania,'” McGinnis said. “I beg to differ: Donald Trump is the Scott Wagner of national politics.”

McGinnis described Wagner’s broad financial support during his own election to the state House in 2012. The trash-disposal magnate pumped $30,000 into the McGinnis campaign and provided material and legal help, he recalled.

Not long afterward, Wagner won his own seat in the Senate and is now challenging Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s re-election.

The message was clear: A unified insurgent force had overthrown orthodox Repub­licans in Harrisburg and Washington and now those victories had to be redoubled.

“The battle has just started,” Tea Party President Rhonda Holland told the audience, listing the challenges they still face. “We really must be vigilant on all items.”

Mirror Staff Writer Ryan Brown is at 946-7457.

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