ALEXANDRIA, Ind. — Political candidates met nearly 70 members of the American Tea Party’s Madison County chapter Thursday night who seemed eager to put the politicians on the spot.

“Are you sympathetic to the tea party movement?” asked one audience member.

“I am,” said Bruce Dunham, Republican candidate for Madison County sheriff, and raised his hand.

“Absolutely,” said former Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings, a Republican who is again running for that office. “We’re taxed too much.”

Judge Tom Clem, of Madison Superior Court 5, who is not running for office this year, had to be asked again.

“You can watch me work,” said Clem, and added that he can be voted out of office if he’s not doing the job people expect. On the national level, though,”all we know is what we’re told. We don’t have the luxury of watching those people work.”

Clem said people might have predispositions about what politicians are doing, but voters are hostage to the media.

“My frustration is I don’t know who to believe, who’s telling it straight.”

An audience member said he begged to differ.

“We can talk directly to Congress,” he said. “We understand what’s going on.” He added that Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and Sen. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, are impersonating the tea party in their campaigns for office.

“We’re going to have a new Republican Party,” the man said.

He was interrupted by Nova Guffey who was hosting the tea partiers’ gathering at the Emery Lee Building in Beulah Park. “This is not Democrat or Republican,” she said. “We’re going to vote for who they are, what they stand for.”

Guffey, wearing a maroon We the People T-shirt, began the forum by talking about the current political situation in Washington and how people in the tea party movement had been lax.

“We let (political activism) slide awhile, and now we’re paying for it dearly,” she said. “We’re tired of being cast aside like waste material. We’re tired of supporting a corrupt government.

“I’m not proud of the direction we’re going,” said Shelby Guffey and expressed her disapproval of President Barack Obama bowing to a foreign leader.

“We owe no country an apology,” she said. “We are Americans.”

Because of the offices they are running for, most of the candidates’ talk centered on law and order.

Cummings bashed current Prosecutor Tom Broderick on the low number of prosecutions he said Broderick has made.

“Find me one (police) officer in Madison County who supports our current prosecutor,” said Cummings. “His failures are the reason I’m here today,”

Broderick could not be reached for comment.

Dunham told the group that, as sheriff, he would look for cost-saving measures in the budget, same as he does as a businessman at Connecticut Electric. “I’ll stay within the budget.”

Clem spoke on his court’s re-entry program.

Many of the audience questions had to do with fiscal accountability and overspending at the national level, one of the planks of the tea party movement, the other being upholding the Constitution and national security.

Clem said he doesn’t see a lot of overspending at the local level, but Cummings said that the recent hike in the county option income tax was overspending. “It was awful,” he said.

Nova Guffey said the tea partiers would be marching in April to get the county to rescind the wheel tax.

“We can’t afford to pay this,” she said. “We’re lucky if we can keep our homes.”

Between the candidates speaking, members of the tea-party committee told the gathering that the group and its goals will prevail.

Everyone cheered when Shelby Guffey said, “We will not be silenced.”

“We’re going to restore the U.S. to its former glory,” added Nova Guffey.

Next meeting

The next meeting of the Madison County chapter of the American Tea Party is April 8 at the Emery Lee Building in Alexandria, but a special meeting is being held on March 24 at the same location.

A different slate of candidates has been invited to each meeting.