Democrats getting independent Tea Party Candidates to Run and Divide Votes with Republicans

Among the campaigns that the Democrats have done this are Joe Sestak's Congressional seat in Southeast Pennsylvania.

The charges of dirty tricks are being leveled in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida — and they involve more than a half-dozen contests that could tip the balance of power in the House.

The accusations range from helping tea party activists circulate candidate petition sheets to underwriting the creation of official tea parties, which then put forth slates of candidates that local conservatives accuse of being rife with Democratic plants.

In all of the affected races, the outcome is expected to be close enough that a third-party candidate who wins just a few percentage points could end up swinging the outcome to the Democratic congressman or candidate.

“The Democrats have come to the realization that they can’t win on issues, and with their flawed candidates, so they are forced to skirt the rules by running candidates who they hope can split the vote with Republicans,” said Paul Lindsey, a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman.

Democratic officials deny there is any grand conspiracy.

"The DCCC has nothing to do with this," said Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the evidence of campaign tampering in at least two states is hard to dismiss. In Michigan, the party chairman in suburban Detroit’s Oakland County now concedes that one of his top aides played a role in helping nine tea party candidates get onto the ballot for various offices across the state — including the open 1st Congressional District and the 7th Congressional District, held by vulnerable freshman Democratic Rep. Mark Schauer. . . .

More fraud by Democrats on the Tea Party front from the WSJ's Political Diary.

You know a movement has arrived when it attracts fraudsters and fakers seeking to piggyback on it.

That appears to be the fate of the Tea Party movement. Yesterday Rick Scott, a GOP candidate for governor in Florida, touted an endorsement by the "TEA Party" a day before his primary against Bill McCollum, the state attorney general.

The only problem is that the TEA Party appears to be a shell group set up by liberals to siphon votes away from Republican candidates in the fall election. In June, WKMG-TV in Orlando exposed financial links between the TEA Party and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson. The report found several TEA Party candidates had ties to Mr. Grayson and also that the Democratic congressman had paid $27,898 to Dou Guetzloe, a key figure in turning the TEA Party into an entity that ran its own independent candidates.

"This is a new low for the fake political TEA party," said Don Hensarling, a Tea Party activist in Florida. He and other Tea Party leaders called on Mr. Scott to reject the endorsement.

They didn't have to wait long. Only hours after trumpeting the news in a campaign e-mail blast, the Scott campaign obliterated all references to it on its website.

Other states, from Michigan to Nevada, have seen attempts by Democrats to create fake Tea Parties and then use them as vehicles to divide conservative voters in the November elections. At least in Florida, they appear to have been quickly exposed and thwarted.