Pam Wohlschlegel, who quit Monday as Palm Beach County director of the South Florida Tea Party, announced this morning that she’s heading a new group called the Palm Beach County Tea Party.

Wohlshclegel resigned after South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson ripped the House GOP Medicare overhaul plan as a “public policy nightmare.” Wilkinson’s comments were the latest example of his tendency to butt heads with others in the tea party movement.

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Pam Wohlschlegel, the director of the Palm Beach County chapter of the South Florida Tea Party, has resigned, saying she disagrees with Chairman Everett Wilkinson‘s recent declaration that Republican House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan ‘s Medicare overhaul plan is a “public policy nightmare.”

Wohlschlegel, who helped organize tea party events and groups in Palm Beach County but didn’t have a policy-setting role, announced her resignation via an e-mail this evening that doesn’t cite specific reasons for her departure. She revealed more in an interview.

“If it were my organization, I would not speak for the organization without taking a poll and I don’t necessarily think that his positions on such things as E-Verify and his latest position on Paul Ryan, I don’t think it necessarily reflects the feelings of all the members of the organization,” Wohlschlegel said.

In addition to opposing the Ryan plan, which is popular with many in the tea party movement, Wilkinson bucked tea party sentiment by opposing a bill to require that businesses use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers.

Wilkinson said his criticism of the Ryan budget plan, sent late Thursday night in a “Dear Patriots” e-mail and later posted on the South Florida Tea Party website, “was in my name, it was not in the name of the tea party in general.”

South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson says he’s “disgusted at the political attacks” against his group over an outstanding bill of more than $6,000 from an April 15 rally in Boca Raton that featured Donald Trump.

Wilkinson is questioning the city’s claim that his group owes more than $3,000 for barriers put up around Sanborn Square and more than $3,000 for police officers assigned to the event. He says “various elements in the city” are trying to damage his group’s reputation.

Wilkinson said tea partyers budgeted about $3,000 for the rally, but costs mushroomed once Trump was announced as the keynote speaker and allowances were made for bigger crowds.

Read his full statement after the jump….

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With the city of Boca Raton saying the South Florida Tea Party owes more than $6,000 for police and barricades used at an April Donald Trump rally, South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson says his group is seeking clarification for some of the charges and will come up with whatever it owes.

“We’re working on paying it,” Wilkinson says. “We don’t have the money right now, but we’re good at paying our bills.”

Read about it in this week’s Politics column (second item).

UPDATED with quote from Tea Party in Action leader….

Republican governor candidate Rick Scott announced late Wednesday that he’ll be outside the South Florida Water Management District headquarters in West Palm Beach this morning with a group called Tea Party in Action to protest the proposed U.S. Sugar buyout.

That prompted an e-mail blast in the wee hours of this morning from South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson questioning the Tea Party in Action group and Scott’s involvement.

Wilkinson, it should be noted, is personally supporting Bill McCollum in the GOP governor primary, though he says his endorsement has nothing to do with the South Florida Tea Party.

Says Tea Party in Action leader Marianne Moran: “Everett Wilkinson spends a lot of time telling reporters who he says are ‘real’ tea party members as if he’s the sole authority. He spends the rest of his time endorsing career politician Bill McCollum. Tea Party in Action wants to kill this corporate bailout of US Sugar. We welcome Rick Scott and any political candidates willing to join this cause.”

Read Scott’s announcement and Wilkinson’s statement after the jump…..

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A 2009 rant by MSNBC’s Rick Santelli helped launch the conservative tea party movement.

Now an Obama supporter’s Facebook rantings have launched an alternative “coffee party” that will try to gain traction Saturday with gatherings across the U.S., including one in West Palm Beach.

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It isn’t just Republicans who are trying to capitalize on the tea party movement and Scott Brown’s surprise Massachusetts Senate win.

As the April 13 special election approaches to replace former Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler in Palm Beach-Broward congressional District 19, Democrat Ted Deutch’s campaign has sent a mailer to voters in the heavily Democratic district warning that “Republicans & The Tea Party Want To Capture YOUR Congressional Seat!”

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Florida Tea Partiers accuse Orlando political activist Doug Guetzloe and his cohorts of hijacking the “Tea Party” brand in a lawsuit filed in federal court today.

Florida Tea Party Chairman Fred O’Neal, Guetzloe and Nicholos Egoroff registered the minor political party with the Department of State in August. Since then, the Tea Party and Guetzloe have backed state Sen. Paula Dockery in her GOP primary bid for governor.

But the suit, filed by activists throughout the state unassociated with O’Neal or Guetzloe, accuses the two of being johnny-come-lately’s to the Tea Party movement and now they want their name back.

“We believe the identity of the Florida Tea Party has been hijacked by cynical forces,” South Florida Tea Party chairman Everett Wilkinson said. “We are especially concerned the group is improperly leveraging
the tea party movement to support the gubernatorial campaign of Sen. Paula Dockery.”

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FORT LAUDERDALE — Venturing outside their traditional milieu of tax-and-spending protests, about a dozen Tea Party activists and sympathizers stood at a street corner today to call for the ouster of Senate Majority Leader and amateur racial dialect theorist Harry Reid.

The event, billed as a “rally” Monday night and then bumped down to “news conference” status this afternoon, seemed to fall outside the South Florida Tea Party organization’s stated mission of promoting “three core values of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets.”

Not exactly, organizers said.

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An Orlando attorney’s effort to run candidates under the “Tea Party” label is panned by many of the conservative activists who have organized Tea Party rallies around the state.

Fred O’Neal, who has an anti-tax background but hasn’t been involved in Tea Party rallies, registered Tea Party with the Florida Division of Elections and says he wants to recruit candidates who favor low taxes and limited government.

South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson is among those vehemently opposed to O’Neal’s idea. Says Wilkinson: “We already have problems with the two-party system and the deals being made. A third party is a third problem.”

Read all about it here.

STUART — What began as a semi-friendly discussion outside a health care forum tonight quickly turned ugly with nearly a dozen people shouting at each other and one spitting on another.

Everett Wilkinson, chairman of the anti-tax South Florida Tea Party, found himself the unsuspecting victim of a spittle attack just minutes after joining the argument.

The altercation had begun with just two people having a semi-friendly discussion outside tonight’s health care forum at Indian River State College’s Chastain campus on Salerno Road. U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, is holding the forum inside The Wolf High-Technology Center.

Trying to make himself heard as proponents and opponents yelled about socialized medicine, Wilkinson raised his arms over his head and shouted: “It’s a great flight to Cuba!”

He turned then and found himself in the middle of an already heated argument between two men. One of the men questioned whether the second man, who was wearing a camouflage jacket, was a veteran.

The second man stepped up to the first and yelled: “I joined after Sept. 11. Do you remember Sept. 11, you ***?!”

Wilkinson and another man, John Fels, of Port St. Lucie, tried to intervene, fending off shoves from the man in camo. Both turned to leave, but the man followed and spit on Wilkinson’s arm.

Deputies arrived just as the crowd split up.

“It’s pretty sad that we can’t have discussion,” Wilkinson said.