From Republican’t to Republikkkan: Patriot Party of Wisconsin created over split by Trump voters

Former President Donald Trump may have stepped back for now from the idea of creating a new political party, but that has not stopped diehard Trump fans disillusioned with the Republican Party from creating Patriot Parties of their own all across the country.

Onetime Trump voters in Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and other states have all made attempts at forming their own iterations of a Patriot Party in recent weeks. Some are affiliated with the American Patriot Party of the United States, which does not list a Wisconsin affiliate, while the fledgling Wisconsin party is affiliated with the Patriot Party of the USA.

A couple have run into problems when they tried to file documents with the Federal Election Commission, and the Trump campaign has had to disavow connections with them. Although the parties seem to have been formed separately and without coordination, what many of these novice politicos share, they said in interviews, is a deep frustration with the GOP and a desire to create an alternative to the two-party system — with or without Trump’s help or participation.

Patriot Party of Wisconsin

The logo of the six-week-old Patriot Party of the State of Wisconsin is neither elephant or donkey, but a lion. It’s site reads “Make Wisconsin Great Again.”

The party was officially formed on Dec. 20, 2020 in a filing with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, which was amended on January 25, 2021. No names were included on the filing. In the blank space for the name of a treasurer is written “appointed, Not Yet.”

A call to the phone number listed for the party, was answered by a man identifying himself only as “Peter” saying he was not comfortable giving any additional information, other than to say he would not describe himself as the new party’s organizer or leader. He said he would pass the Examiner‘s message along to a communication director, but also declined to share that person’s name.

“No, I really don’t think I can say,” he responded. “We’re leery about trying to be cancelled when we’re just starting to get off the ground. But I’ll pass your message along.”

The state party had a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, according to Google records, but the pages have since been removed and the Twitter account suspended. However, it does have an active website and a blog post from a member who drove from Milwaukee to take part in the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally, according to the anonymous writer. It also has video from the event, claiming members were “doing sign up, advertising, networking, and organizing with the national team.”

The address is given as 2047 N Cambridge Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53202, which is the Riverwalk Apartments owned by Bell Property Management. Amanda Andree, the assistant general manager of Bell, said that it was not the company, but rather a tenant who lives at that address.

The website proclaims: “The Patriot Party of Wisconsin is now forming its statewide leadership committee and looking for volunteers who would like to be involved. This is guaranteed to be a massive movement, and certainly will be historical. Join the history books with us!” Under upcoming events the party, which mentions no members or leaders by name, lists a “MAGA Fundraising Campout and Music Festival” for summer 2021.

Florida patriots

Recently the American Patriot Party of the United States – or TAPPUS, for short — formed as a political party committee with an address in St. Petersburg, Florida. The group’s statement of organization filed with federal campaign finance regulators lists it as the brainchild of St. Petersburg health insurance broker Brian Dow, Denver-area information technology worker Joe Faletra and Larry Glenn of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, who has a background as a treasurer.

They have also enlisted Wendy Robbins, a Tampa-area public affairs professional, to handle press requests. In an interview, Dow said he and Glenn served in the Marines together and Faletra is an old high school buddy he recently re-connected with online, but they all found themselves thinking similarly about starting a new political venture.

Dow ticked off a list of party platform planks that sound much like what the GOP offers — lowering taxes, balancing the budget, restricting undocumented immigration — but said unlike the GOP, this party will deliver.

“I’ve had an awful lot of people jumping up and down yelling at us, ‘Don’t you know you’re going to take votes away from the Republican Party?’ And my answer to that is, in the words of Trump, ‘What have we got to lose?’” Dow said. “The Patriot Party is a repudiation of the GOP for the central fact that they weren’t very supportive of the president, they had the majority once upon a time over the last four years, and they failed to do the things that need to be done for the American people.”

Though Dow said he voted for Trump twice and likes the policies the former president pursued, the idea to start this political party came before Trump mused he might start such a party. Dow doesn’t want Trump to be the party’s head honcho anyway because he’s too personally divisive. The party hopes to start small by recruiting candidates to run for a few local positions, and then hopefully branch into a meaningful political player, he said.

GOP turbulence

Although these kinds of nascent efforts are unlikely to strike fear into the hearts of the leaders of the Republican Party, the fact that several former GOP voters exhibiting parallel thinking in starting similarly named splinter parties does appear to indicate a broader dissatisfaction in the wake of Trump’s exit from the White House.

That was reflected in a recent CBS/YouGov poll, which found that 70% of Republicans would at least consider joining a Trump party. GOP leaders do have potentially more serious worries at the center-right of their party, however, as dozens of former officials, including people who have served as White House and congressional staff, met recently to discuss starting a breakaway political party to distance themselves from the Trump wing of the party.

In the meantime, TAPPUS has some competition just an hour-and-a-half drive south along Florida’s Gulf Coast. There, in Punta Gorda, another former Marine, Jim Davis, founded the MAGA Patriot Party late last month, although he listed the group’s headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. Davis, a local government employee, said he founded the party to “get the attention of the Republican Party that really we felt they weren’t representing us anymore.”

“Everybody had a lot of anger and we were trying to focus that anger into something more positive,” he said in an interview. “We were kind of listening for what Trump potentially would do, so when he mentioned he was considering the Patriot Party, a lot of us are already considering it.”

Davis got a rude awakening though: When he filed with the Federal Election Commission to form his version of the party, he didn’t really know what he was doing and accidentally formed a political action committee affiliated with Donald J. Trump For President, the president’s official campaign arm. The Trump campaign filed a statement with the FEC disavowing the Davis’ group not long after.

“At first, we were disappointed,” Davis conceded. “But I think in the end, it was like, ‘Well, you know, this is not about Trump anymore, this is about the people.’ And so we don’t really care what Trump does, as far as what his plans are, we’re going to continue with ours, because we can’t put all of our hope on one person.”

Despite the hiccup, Davis said he’s retracted the political action committee and plans to re-file properly soon as the Constitutional Patriot Party. He said he’s working with cohorts from Georgia all the way out to Colorado

Georgia, North Carolina patriots

Unfortunately for Davis, he isn’t even the only Patriot Party to have made that exact filing error. One state north, in Grovetown, Georgia, Army veteran and firefighter Michael Gaul tried to create a political party, but accidentally formed a political action committee he claimed to be affiliated with Trump. He said in an interview that happened because he simply didn’t know how to work the FEC website. A disavowal letter from Trump’s presidential campaign came soon after.

No matter, though. Gaul has filed to run for president himself, as a standard bearer of the Patriot Party. And that is not where the run on Patriot Parties ends. In Mt. Gilead, North Carolina, the Patriots Party was created in January by a man whose other claim to fame is owning a once-popular live action roleplaying game.

In Illinois, the group du jour is the Patriots Party for USA. That is not to mention Donald Magyar, who held the patent for “Patriot Party” from 2007 to 2017 and tried to renew it in January 2020 — only to be followed by several other attempts to trademark the phrase or something similar for use as a political party early this year.

The Patriot Party frenzy mostly began after Trump mused in January about starting a new party, and suggesting it could be called the Patriot Party. Still, it may have been much ado about nothing. Later that month, Trump met at his Mar-a-Lago resort with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and the two men said in statements after the huddle that they discussed Trump helping Republicans win back seats in Congress in 2022.