Activists bring 'tea party' to Capitol Hill

Protesters targeted Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a first-term congressman whose Fairfax County district voted for Republican Robert F. McDonnell in this week's gubernatorial election. Connolly, up for reelection next year, said that he has not decided whether to vote for health-care reform but that the tea-party activists will not influence his vote.

"You try to hear them out respectfully," Connolly said. "The problem is they're not here on a mission of dialogue. They're here on a mission to persuade and discourage."

Connolly said he had an unnerving confrontation in his office when a protester grabbed his arm and did not let up. "I told her, 'You really need to take your arms off me. I'm on my way to vote,' " Connolly said. "I was a little shocked, but I ascribed it more to an overabundance of zeal than any malign intent."

Hours before the rally began, Capitol Police arrested nine pro-reform activists in the Hart Senate Office Building and charged them with unlawful entry. They had staged a sit-in the seventh-floor office of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), demanding that he return campaign contributions from health insurers. Lieberman has threatened to join Republicans in a filibuster.

The tea-party rally was the latest display of a populist wave of voter discontent among conservatives, which has divided the Republican Party in recent weeks. Protesters said the health-care bill is the latest move by Democrats toward socialism.

"I was born in Cuba," said Malvi Lennon, 51, an insurance adjuster from Windsor, Conn. "The more I hear Obama, the more I hear [former Cuban president Fidel] Castro. He is trying to take apart our country."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), holding a copy of the Constitution, fed into this sentiment by calling the health-care bill "the greatest threat to freedom that I have seen."