Here is Our Remarkable Story!

On July 11, 2009 the Portage County TEA Party was founded. One of the four original founders of the group, Jennine Kubala, Beth Pulin, and one other, Tom Zawistowski became the Executive Director in January of 2010, a position he still holds.  Under his leadership, the Portage County TEA Party became one of the most successful liberty groups in Ohio and the Nation with over 2,600 members at it's peak. When the Portage County TEA Party began, EVERY elected official in the county and most city governments were Democrats, including the County Auditor who claimed she was a Republican but was not! Even the Chairman of the Portage County Republican was a Democrat! The County had been in the control democrats since 1958.



From our founding we worked tirelessly to educate the public about the Constitution, political party structure, and the process for getting conservatives elected to local offices. Over the next 16 years the Portage County TEA Party turned Portage County from totally Blue to Totally Red. We took over the Portage County Republican Party in 2019 and today EVERY elected county official and both Ohio House and Senate members are Republican, elected primarily through the efforts of the Portage County TEA Party Members.

In 2010, Zawistowski's efforts in Portage County and NE Ohio helped Elect Republican John Kasich as Governor and Republican Rob Portman to US Senate in races they were projected to lose. Through Zawistowski's leadership the Portage County TEA Party knocked on 40,000 doors and swept the election for the Republians in a historically Democratic County for the first time since 1958. Since our founding, Ohio has turned from a "purple" state to a "red" state with ALL Statewide elected official being Republicans and Super Majority Repubicans in the Ohio House and the Ohio Senate. We also helped the national TEA Party movement take the US House from Democrats by winning a historic, and unexpected by the experts, 62 seats in the House to slow down the destrutive Obama socialist agenda to "radically transform" the United States. This was the Portage County TEA Party's first involvement outside of local politics.
 

The Creation of Libert Camp for Kids

In 2013 the Portage County TEA Party spun off a novel idea to promote historical knowledge for school age children. The idea came from Nanette Zawistowski and Anne Kaczmarek who created the "Liberty Camp for Kids" summer day camp where children could "Experience the Found of America". They were quickly joined by Lanny and Brenda Derreberry and a host of annual volunteers and reinactors to put together a program that captivated kids throughout Northeast Ohio for over a decade. Without doubt, Liberty Camp for Kids, is one of the most successful efforts of the Portage County TEA Party. Thousands of Portage County children have "met" our founding fathers in persons each summer on the grounds of the Portage County Historical Society where children live as if it were 1775!  The camp continues to this day under the leadership of Rita Scott and her team of volunteers.



From 2015 through 2025, the Portage County TEA Party has played a critical role in our efforts to defeat the radical left and restore Constitutionally Limited Governance and the Rule of Law to our Nation. In 2016, the efforts of the members of the Portage County TEA Party and the many other TEA Party groups in Ohio led directly to the election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency. If Northeast Ohio does not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 he would never have won Ohio and would neve have become President of the United States. The Portage County TEA Party led those efforts. You will read more details about those efforts below.
 

Our Fight to Save Fracking in Ohio and the United States (2009-2012)

In 2010, Tom and the members of the Portage County TEA Party became aware of an effort by Leftist out of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY to ban oil and gas hydrolic fracturing, which is call FRACKING today. The radical climate activists were funded by powerful leftist organiations like the Park Foundation, Heinz Endowments, and William Penn Foundation who paid for the academic reports, activist organizing, data tools, high priced lawyers, and public-facing research that fueled anti-fracking outreach to local and state governments starting in 2009–2010. Their plan was to cripple America by promoting lies about the dangers of hydrolic fracturing at a time when the US economy was starving for plentyful low cost energy.

They even produced a propaganda "documentary" film called "Gasland" in 2010 that claimed that hydrolic fracturing polluted local water, caused your kitchen faucet to water to ignite into flames, and caused earthquakes!  The goal was to fighten elected officials and the public in order to get them to ban what would become one of the most successful energy technologies in the history of the word in order to criple capitalism!

At the time, 2009, Ohio's economy had been declining for years and hydrolic fracturing was a promissing new technology that could bring many much needed jobs and businesses to Ohio. Suddenly, we heard stories about high priced lawyers from out of state attending our Portage County Township Trustee meetings pushing for townships to ban fracking! Upon investigating their claims, including Tom spending and entire day at the home of a prominent Kent State University professor who was an expert in oil and gas drilling, it became clear that this effort out of New York was not about public safety at all - it was about crippling the United States Oil & Gas Industry for ideological reasons.

The Portage County TEA Party members took immediate action. We started to attend the Township Trustee meetings in which the idea of banning fracking were being discussed. We handed out flyers debunking the claims of the lefty lawyers were making. We did Press Releases warning other citizens and counties about what was going on. We meet with Oil & Gas Industry Executives to warn about the threat to that industry in Ohio and our Nation. We started providing information to other TEA Party Groups in Ohio asking them to hold meetings on the Fracking topic and go to their Township Trustee Meetings. New York state was already on the way to banning fracking and Ohio would be the next domino to fall and we could not let that happen! If Ohio banned fracking, it would be the end of fracking in the US!

Then in 2011, we meet Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, two Irish born documentary film makers, who were interested in making a film to debunk the "Gasland" propaganda film. They had no money to make the film so the TEA Party Movement got behind our first "crowd sourcing" effort through a new online service called Kickstarter. We raised some $150,000 for their efforts and then they recieved funding from some organizations alligned with the gas industry and were able to release the film "FrackNation" in January of 2013.


However, efforts were being made to keep the film out of movie theaters so that the public could not see the truth about fracking. So Tom organized an effort to have the film shown at TEA Party meetings throughout Ohio and even in some theaters that we rented for the showings. The film was a hit and it had a major impact on turning public opinion in Ohio in favor of fracking. That created the politcial environment for elected officials to act on May 24, 2013 to pass legislation which legally upheld hydrolic fracturing and making clear that local zoning ordinances or municipal bans cannot block fracking — only the state can regulate drilling. 

As a direct result of the Portage County TEA Party's and Ohio TEA Party Groups' efforts, the United States has surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia as the largest producer of Oil and Gas of any nation in the World. Today 64% of all oil and gas produced in the United States comes from wells the have been hydrolically fracked and the technonlogy is now in use all over the world.

The Council of Economic Advisers (White House, 2019): Estimated the shale revolution lowered U.S. consumer energy bills by ~$203 billion per year (about $2,500 per family of four), with ~80% of the savings from cheaper natural gas and electricity; oil accounts for the rest. A savings of $203 Billion per year over the last 13 years amounts to $2.6 TRILLION in saving for American Citizens and Families. The Portage County TEA Party deserves a tremendous amount of credit for our efforts to protect and defend American Prosperity!