The surprise was that the biggest opposition has come from Tea Party members themselves, who say their renegade, grass-roots movement was built on suspicion of government, and they are not too keen to start playing financial footsie with the enemy.
“No, I won’t buy one,” said Jim Wise, a Tea Party activist from this community northwest of Phoenix, who wrote to lawmakers in a failed effort to nix the plates. “I realize the people behind this had the best of intentions, but it goes against what we stand for, which is limited government.”
There has been a movement in state capitals across the country to commemorate the Tea Party on the backs of cars, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The group has tallied at least 10 other states considering such plates this year, three of which — Virginia, Texas and Mississippi — have joined Arizona in endorsing them. But opposition has been most heated in Arizona, and mostly from Tea Party backers.
Even before Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill creating the plates last week, Arizona had dozens of specialty license plates, including those honoring organ donors, discouraging abortion, lamenting child abuse, promoting the spaying and neutering of pets, and urging people to follow the golden rule.
“In Arizona, we let people express themselves on their plates as long as it’s legal,” said John Kavanagh, a Republican representative who supported the Tea Party plates. “And to discriminate against one group over the other would not be right.”
The plates are fund-raising tools for organizations, which must come up with $32,000 for the state to produce them. In exchange, for every $25 fee taken in to issue a plate, $8 goes to the state and the other $17 to the groups.
Initially, Arizona planned to pay $32,000 for the Tea Party plate, which will feature a likeness of the historic bright yellow Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag popular in the Tea Party.
But protests from frugally minded Tea Party members prompted the subsidy to be dropped, and supporters of the plates will now have to raise the money.
Still, the bureaucracy created to handle the plates rubs many activists the wrong way. A 13-member committee appointed by the governor, the Senate president and the House speaker will dole out the money from the plates to Tea Party groups. Groups must submit applications to be considered and agree to open their books for government audits to show how they spent the money.
That sounds like an expansion of government to some Tea Party members. Many of them studiously avoid government money in running their groups and oppose the idea of increasing government, even by 13 people.
“This is classic government,” said Trent Humphries, a co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party, who said he would not serve on the committee if asked. “I don’t know a Tea Party person who supports this.”
Mr. Humphries is pushing for the law to be amended in the next legislative session so that the money raised from the plates goes directly to ease the state’s budget woes and not to finance individual Tea Party groups, a change he believes fellow activists would back.
Mr. Wise, a retiree who belongs to two Tea Party groups, has been criticizing the plates wherever he can. “I’ve brought it up at Tea Party meetings, and there’s been a lot of groans,” he said. “There are a lot of e-mails going around. We’re establishing a government organization to take taxpayers’ money and pass it back to grass-roots organizations. Is that what we want?”
Not all Tea Party activists are opposed. Don Shooter, a farmer who led the Tea Party in Yuma before being elected to the State Senate last fall, sponsored the legislation. And Russ Clark, a radio talk show host in Yuma, said he planned to put a Tea Party plate on his GMC truck and to kick in $10,000 to help offset the cost of the plate’s production, so long as he is paid back with plate revenues.
His biggest concern is the reaction on the road. “There are some who hate the Tea Party so much that I will expose myself to some anger,” he said. “But I need to stand up for the Tea Party.”
Groups are eligible for the revenue from sale of the Tea Party plates, the law says, if they promote the Constitution, state sovereignty, border security and limited government, which Arizona Democrats say sounds like the money might go to further political ends.
“I think we’re really treading into some dangerous territory by doing something like this, and I think it’s setting a very bad precedent,” said State Representative Chad Campbell, a Democrat who opposed the plates.
The Arizona plates have attracted the attention of Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, who introduced legislation in Washington this week to take away 15 percent of a state’s federal highway money if license plate revenue goes to groups advocating for political candidates.
“Using official government resources to help bankroll an explicit political agenda — whether on the right or left — is flat-out wrong,” said Mr. Ackerman, who is calling his bill the “License Plate Political Slush Fund Prevention Act.”
To win support for the Tea Party plates, Arizona Republicans merged their legislation with bills for plates on hunger, littering and cancer in children.
“Who could vote against that?” Mr. Wise asked.
Salvador Rodriguez contributed reporting from Phoenix.
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