The Battle for Virginia's 5th District

How the Ancestral Spirit of Patrick Henry Inspired Me to Join the Tea Party

New from Broadside Books' Voices of the Tea Party. As a child, Mark Lloyd's grandmother always told him that he was a descendant of Patrick Henry. Though he's still trying to document the connection, he likes to believe that he is guided by Henry's spirit. As a resident of Campbell County, Virginia—the county of Henry's final homestead—Lloyd follows Henry's example every day, dedicating his life to ensure the liberty Henry fought for would be passed on to his own children and grandchildren. As an active grassroots Tea Party participant in the political elections in Virginia's 2010 Fifth Congressional District, Lloyd describes the Republican primary battles between the tea party and Establishment Republicans, the somewhat awkward General Election alliance between the two, and the challenge of holding the victor of the General Election—an Establishment Republican who defeated an incumbent Democrat only with tea party support—accountable to the principles that brought him to Washington in January of 2011.