The Tea Party's Man in Hartford

As the only avowed Tea Party adherent to win election in Connecticut, Joe Markley is a curiously laid-back representative of a movement known for its anger and frustration with government spending and policies.

"I've not the hard-driving sort," said Markley, who has degrees in English from Amherst and Columbia. "I'm a very relaxed firebrand."

Markley's brand of small-government Republicanism has not sold well in Connecticut since 1984, when he and 11 other GOP challengers won state Senate seats on Ronald Reagan's coattails, only to lose them two years later on a changing political tide.

After an absence of 24 years, he's coming back in January to take the same seat, allied with minority Republicans and the even smaller Tea Party, an anti-tax movement that failed to coalesce here into a coherent political vision or strategy.

"If I can't accomplish as much as I'd like to on the legislative side, it seems like the best opportunity I have is to try to pull the threads of this movement together--to the extent they can be pulled together," Markley said.

READ MORE