That would have been impossible because there is no such thing as "the TEA party".
There are TEA parties all over the USA , I think there are 40+ registered TEA parties and ten of thousands of divergent members with no real connections, other than a set of common ideas.
I go to TEA party rallies in WPA and we have no real national ties, which is why it is almost impossible for the lefty crazies to defeat us.
We have no single spokesman or leader. It's just us.
Are you aware of the role of collective nouns in the English language?
Anyway, local tea parties can obviously be very effective to the state level with local races.
As to the national presidential one, how’s that working out for you?