The organizers of the National Tea Party Convention today announced that they will be forming a 501(c)4 corporation and related political action committee (PAC) to raise money to support 15-20 candidates for Congress or the Senate in the 2010 elections. “I have long said that the Tea Party movement doesn’t endorse candidates, candidates endorse it,” Judson Phillips, the convention’s main organizer told reporters. “But there are exceptions and this new entity will be completely separate from the Tea Party movement.”

Phillips said he would not be affiliated with the newly incorporated firm, Ensuring Liberty, but the convention’s spokesman Mark Skoda, a Tea Party activist from Memphis, said he’s been asked to be Ensuring Liberty’s president. Skoda would not say if he’d accepted the role and refused to name four others who have been asked to be on the board, though he did promise unprecedented transparency. He said the new group will seek small dollar donations but will also accept corporate money. They have not yet decided if they will take money from registered lobbyists. “This was created as an outlet for donors interested in giving money and time,” Skoda said. Ensuring Liberty (already in my head I’m confusing it with Operation Enduring Freedom) would support “conservative candidates” and would help “counter the fragmentation that exists today,” he added.