Rival Political Rallies Occupy Grassy Strip Outside Duncan Hunter Offices

“The slumbering giant of the American people has awakened,” said Frank Gormlie of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org, addressing about 50 people who answered a call to rally Tuesday outside Rep. Duncan D. Hunter’s El Cajon office.  “We’re not going to take it.”

Standing in a circle near a shade tree, protesters endured muggy weather in the low 90s as El Cajon police officers watched nearby, seated in an air-conditioned cruiser.  

Thirty feet away, on the same grassy strip on Cordell Court, 15 backers of Hunter stood quietly holding small “THANK YOU DUNCAN!” signs and occasionally rolling their eyes at what they called name-calling from the other side.

“The problem is they don’t watch Fox News,” said one of the Hunter fans, which included tea party supporters.

“I watch the Communist News Network [CNN],” said a Poway man in his 50s or 60s named Mark, who wouldn’t give his last name but told how his wife had made the yellow Don’t Tread on Me flag he waved—with the snake poised to devour an Obama logo.

Mostly middle-aged and keeping their distance, the two groups assembled in the wake of Washington’s debt drama, which ended before the nootime rally began when President Barack Obama signed into law an increase in the debt limit.

A woman who said she was a former private school teacher had organized the Hunter supporters after reading about MoveOn’s plans for the rally in Santee Patch.

A lawyer, MoveOn’s Gormlie is the founder of the OB Rag, an online paper in Ocean Beach. He said he lives in Lemon Grove—which is outside Hunter’s 52nd Congressional District, which includes La Mesa, Spring Valley, Poway, Rancho Bernardo and Ramona.

But Hunter (still in Washington) had voted against the debt bill—saying he was against its cuts in the defense budget—and bucked House Republican leadership.

So the rally was focused more on recurring grievances—against “the right-wing cabal” that they said controls the U.S. Supreme Court and a slew of other issues. One man inveighed against Seattle’s publicly financed NBA stadium. Another accused Hunter of suppressing his free-speech rights.

Gormlie encouraged his troops to visit the Hunter offices inside the quiet two-story office building. A handful accepted the challenge, taking the elevator to the second floor, entering Hunter’s tiny entrance room and registering their feelings.

A receptionist behind a window politely proffered legal pads labeled with several themes and invited the visitors to write their names and phone numbers—and their message to the congressman. (See attached video.)

“Duncan Hunter is going to see a lot more of us,” Gormlie said near the end of the 50-minute stand-and-talk. “The tea party has been lied to. We’re up against a sleazy party. They’re in it to keep power. They’re not [for] freedom.”

Said a female member of the pro-Hunter group: “You know, they keep calling us names, when they [say] ‘Idiots—that’s what they are.’ They use the B-word,” which rhymes with witch.