Tea-Bag Protest Hits Federal Pay Hike : Radio Hosts’ Lobby Helps Listeners Tune In to Issues

Almost before Congress noticed, several dozen radio talk-show hosts--armed with fax machines and studio microphones--tapped into their listeners’ fury earlier this month and created a potent new nationwide lobbying network.

The radio hosts in cities ranging from Boston to Detroit to Los Angeles say they hope the loose confederation they formed will be as politically formidable in its own way as such established lobbying groups as Common Cause and the National Rifle Assn.

Their first target was the proposed 50% federal pay hike, which Congress reluctantly rejected after listeners around the country flooded Capitol Hill with tea bags symbolic of a taxpayer revolt.

While assessments vary as to what role the tea bags played in convincing lawmakers to vote against their own raise, the ad-hoc T-Bag Network now is aiming against Bush Administration proposals to rescue the savings and loan industry.

This time, the “T-jays” will be asking listeners to send dimes to congressmen to protest “foisting the burden of bailing out S&Ls; on the back of the middle-income taxpayer,” said Boston talk-show host Jerry Williams, who added enthusiastically, “Beltway bashing is on the rise again.”

Williams, host of his own afternoon call-in program at station WRKO-AM since 1957, and his 50 or so colleagues are not certain the S&L; campaign will be as effective, but they already have the support of consumer activist Ralph Nader and others who backed the original tea-bag effort.

And some in Congress are already warning that the campaigns raise the specter of public officials too easily swayed by talk-show audiences, whose opinions may not be fully representative of sentiment nationwide.

“Radio is a powerful medium that gives powerless people a tremendous impact,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), a strong supporter of the pay raise. “I don’t think you’re likely to see the Administration make foreign policy based on talk shows, but I do think there is a danger here.”

Called Grandstanding

Other lawmakers, including Reps. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) and Tony Coelho (D-Merced), have decried the tea-bag crusade as grandstanding and an oversimplification of a complex issue.

And even supporters of the network say its efforts may have backfired by thwarting efforts to trade a pay raise for a ban on outside speaking fees from special-interest groups.

“We may have saved $25 million in pay raises,” said talk-show host Michael Jackson of Los Angeles’ KABC-AM, a latecomer to the tea-bag bandwagon, “but we might find the eventual damage far more expensive because Congress will still be able to continue receiving honoraria.”

But to organizers of the rebellion, the only “danger” they have created is that the nation’s elected representatives might feel more accountable to the voters. “Congress has the same agenda they did with the pay raise issue,” Williams said of the S&L; issue. “Their time frames are locked in. Nobody’s listening to the public.

“Congress complains about us,” he added, “but what we did was real democracy, for crying out loud.”

Begins as Prank

It began as a one-time prank by talk-show host Roy Fox of WXYT-AM in Detroit.

Fox traces the campaign from Dec. 14, the day he discussed the proposed pay raise and the upcoming anniversary of the Boston Tea Party with a listener on his morning call-in show.

“Write your name, address and telephone number on a tea bag and send it to your congressman,” he bawled into his microphone. “Tell ‘em: ‘Read my tea bag--No 50% Pay Raise!’ ”

Within days, he had heard from talk-show hosts in Florida, Texas and other states who had gotten wind of the campaign.

In Boston, Williams also took up the pay-raise issue on Dec. 14 but, hearing of Fox’s gimmick, could not get his own version of it off the ground because a spokesman for the Boston postmaster informed his listeners that tea bags were too big to be mailed in a first-class letter.

Even so, within 48 hours, the issue had become the No. 1 topic of talk-show callers coast to coast who phone radio hosts and debate them and other listeners over the air.

Pragmatic in Timing

“I talked to Roy a few days later and we decided that the activity would really get going after the holidays,” Williams said. “That’s when the politically proper moment would be there. We were as pragmatic about it as (House Speaker) Jim Wright in getting out the vote on Feb. 7.”

He and Fox began calling and faxing colleagues in Dallas, Palm Beach, Fla., San Diego, Seattle, Baltimore and Los Angeles. Eventually they refined their pitch and directed tea bags toward the National Taxpayer Union so a huge bundle could be delivered all at once to Congress.

“The era of the fax machine has had a lot to do with this,” said Tom Leykis, an afternoon drive-time talk-show host on KFI-AM in Los Angeles. “We were all linked up early on and the next time there is an issue like the pay raise, it’s already in place.”

(Williams and his producer, Paula O’Connor, began firing off fax announcements on the S&L; bailout campaign last week.)

By the time the House voted 380 to 48 on Feb. 7 to block the pay raise, which otherwise would have gone into effect automatically the next day, more than 80,000 tea bags had poured into the Washington offices of the National Taxpayers Union. Since Feb. 7, another 5,000 to 10,000 have arrived, a spokesman for the organization said.

Addressed Local Issues

Williams has used his influence to muster caller support before on local and state issues, ranging from state budget increases to a recently overturned Massachusetts compulsory seat-belt law.

But the pay hike was his first national issue. Despite Fox’s reluctance to try again, Williams is so certain that the talk-show network is a permanent fixture in national politics that he has called for the first formal gathering--complete with convention protocol, resolutions and minutes--for this spring in Boston.

“I’ve invited about 50 talk-show hosts to convene at a Boston hotel on April 21 and 22,” he said. “C-SPAN is going to televise it and I’ve already gotten requests from CBS News to cover it too.”

Not all of the talk-show hosts are on the bandwagon yet. Leykis, for one, is not persuaded that the S&L; issue has broad support.

“A guy driving home from a job where he makes $30,000 or $40,000 a year tunes in and hears that these guys want to make $135,000 a year . . . he understands the pay raise issue very clearly,” Leykis said. “But what about a more complex issue? Let’s say we have a campaign to end funding for the Strategic Defense Initiative. It’d take two days just to explain the issue.”

Larry King, whose Washington-based evening call-in program airs over more than 800 affiliates of the Mutual Broadcasting Network, cautions that there must be broad public support from the outset if the lobbying is to work again.

Had Bipartisan Support

“Eighty percent of the public were with them in the first place,” he said. “There was bipartisan support. How can you go wrong with an issue that both Ralph Nader and Patrick Buchanan agree on?”

What Fox and his colleagues did was focus listener outrage, he added. “To their credit, talk-show hosts started the pay raise groundswell.

“I really don’t think that Congress would have done anything about the pay raise thing if they hadn’t pushed it,” King added. “I didn’t get one call in favor of that pay raise. Not one.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who voted for the pay raise, believes that the T-Bag Network merely affirms already existing frustration and cynicism against big government. “Talk shows are going to tap into widespread resentment toward Congress, the courts, government and other institutions . . . wherever they can to increase their ratings,” he said.

If issues were more important than ratings, Waxman suggested, genuine political concerns ranging from health care to pollution to homelessness would be grist for talk-show campaigns.

Leykis predicted that another national talk-show campaign will develop even if the send-a-dime effort against the S&L; bailout fails.

“I’ll tell you the one thing (the tea-bag crusade) demonstrated without question: For years people have tried to characterize callers on shows like mine as isolated freaks and weirdos who don’t have anything better to do with their time. We’ve known for a long time that that just isn’t true.

“People who call in to shows like ours represent a real cross section of the country and Congress had better pay attention.”